What’s going on with Toronto’s new recycling system?
Residents around the city say the province’s new recycling company has forgotten to pick up their bins
The launch of the provincially run privatized recycling program has been a bit of a mess, and Toronto residents aren’t happy about it.
On January 1, Toronto’s recycling pickup switched from its previous city-run operation to a new system, overseen by the province and directly handled by a private not-for-profit company called Circular Materials. Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin of Don Valley West told the Toronto Star that, by her estimate, Circular Materials missed 1,000 homes in Davisville, South Leaside and North York during the period following the holidays.
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In an interview with CP24, Councillor Anthony Perruzza of Humber River–Black Creek said complaints in his ward have been “through the roof.” He also told the Toronto Star that he believes 10,000 residents had their recycling collection skipped.
Last December, a media release published by Circular Materials promised an “enhanced recycling program” that “recycles more materials, more easily.” It also noted an expanded list of recyclable products that would be consistent across the entire province, including coffee cups, black plastic containers, frozen juice containers, ice cream tubs and toothpaste tubes. That part seems good. What’s bad is how many people across the city are dealing with overflowing recycling bins blowing around their neighbourhoods because the recycling company failed to pick them up.
“We have done everything humanly possible, and more, to try to fill in the holes of the provincial system,” University-Rosedale councillor Dianne Saxe told the Star, regarding the recycling program roll-out. “This is Doug Ford’s problem and he needs to fix it.”
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
