Ontario’s tire recycling program has slowed to a crawl following the Ford government’s decision to lower recycling targets earlier this year.
Thousands of old tires are now being stockpiled as organizations responsible for tire recycling meet lower targets and reduce collection and recycling operations.
Industry experts say the stockpiled tires could soon be sent to the U.S. for incineration, despite eco fees that consumers pay on tires to ensure they are recycled.
“This is a problem that’s gonna absolutely hit the consumers of Ontario,” said Adam Moffatt, executive director of the Ontario Tire Dealers Association, which represents more than 500 tire dealers, retailers, distributors, wholesalers, and industry vendors.
More than 80 members of the association have complained that their used tires aren’t being picked up, said Moffatt.
Consumers “may be told at some point in time in the coming weeks that they can’t drop (tires) off anymore,” said Moffatt.
The slowdown is the result of changes made to provincial regulations that came into effect in 2019. Those regulations made tire producers — companies that manufacture or sell tires, or products with tires — responsible for managing tires at the end of their life, replacing a monopoly held by Ontario Tire Stewardship, a government agency, for decades.
The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks said in an email that it is working with the provincial authority that oversees recycling in Ontario to “address these disruptions to the collection and processing of end-of-life tires.”
A number of so-called producer responsibility organizations, or PROs, were set up in the province to manage recycling for tire companies, which can choose which PRO they want to belong to.
The shakeup was intended to promote competition and efficiency in the recycling process.
But in January, the Ford government changed the regulations, reducing the recovery target for tires from an 85 per cent collection and management rate to a 65 per cent management rate, which means tire producers have to recycle, retread or reuse 65 per cent of the tires, by weight, that they put on the Ontario market.
Melissa Carlaw, vice president of communications and sustainability for eTracks Tire Management Systems, the largest PRO in Ontario, representing 70 to 80 per cent of the market, said the slowdown started after another PRO that represented 15 to 20 per cent of the tire industry stopped collecting tires in late summer.
“Once other PROs met their management targets they slowed/stopped,” said Carlaw in an email. “This has led to backlogs and they became more than eTracks — or any single PRO — could reasonably absorb.”
Carlaw said eTracks is trying to pick up the slack but can’t absorb the higher volume of tires that have come into in the market over the past few months. The non-profit organization, founded by the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada, a national trade group, is collecting any tires that have become problematic “as we are notified of them and sending them for recycling,” said Carlaw.
The provincial regulations require PROs to continue picking up tires from garages or autobody shops, for example, that they have identified to RPRA as sites in their collection system.
But once a PRO has reached its recycling target, any excess tires from sites outside their collection system can be incinerated.
The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the provincial agency that oversees recycling in Ontario, said it is aware of the situation.
“Tire producers and their PROs have been reminded that they must continue to collect and manage tires from all collection sites that are part of their collection system,” said Wilson Lee, RPRA’s chief of programs and public affairs, in an email.
“RPRA is actively monitoring compliance and will take action if producers and PROs fail to collect tires from their collection systems,” said Lee.
In November, the Environment Ministry issued an order to CFT Recycling, a site near Ottawa, to address compliance issues related to the stockpiling of tires. The ministry has stayed the order while it reviews new information from the company. Carlaw, of eTracks, said her organization is currently hauling tires out of the independently operated site, and taking them to a processor in Brantford.
The province has also lowered the number of sites that PROs have to collect from in Ontario, from 4,872 to 4,332. In a small town, a PRO could still be required to collect from all the garages or tire stores, based on that city’s population.
But in Toronto, where there are a myriad of stores that sell tires, or products with tires, a PRO can drop a site once they’ve reached their target.
That means, for example, that a garage dropped by a PRO would have to pay to have its used tires hauled away, even if they are registered with that PRO — and even though eco fees, meant to cover recycling costs, have already been paid by the consumer.
Before the collection targets were lowered by the province, PROs were collecting from more than 11,000 sites, according to data from RPRA.
It’s at least the second time that the competitive system brought in by the province has hit a major hurdle.
In 2023, one PRO collected more tires than they needed to meet their obligations on behalf of the tire producers they worked for. The company essentially held credits, as in tonnes of tires collected, that other PROs needed to meet recycling targets for that year on behalf of their producers.
Dozens of companies faced potential fines for not meeting 2023 targets, but instead of buying the credits from the other PRO, which tire producers allege were overpriced, the tire producers settled with RPRA for $7.44 million, essentially paying the authority money that consumers had paid to them in eco fees.
Editor’s note — Dec. 15, 2025
This article has been updated.
