Small businesses say they’re ‘an afterthought now’ after changes to blue box recycling program

Changes to the recycling program has created confusion for businesses. CTV London’s Reta Ismail with what people need to know.

Responsibility for London’s blue box program has officially shifted from the City of London to Circular Materials, the producer responsibility organization now running residential curbside recycling, but businesses have been left out of the new system.

Under provincial rules that took effect Jan. 1, Circular Materials is responsible for household recycling collection. However, the service does not extend to industrial, commercial, or institutional businesses.

Circular Materials CEO Allen Langdon said the organization was never set up to collect from businesses and doing so would raise both financial and logistical issues.

“Our producers have already paid hundreds of millions of dollars,” Langdon said in an interview. “So one question would be, who would pay for providing the service? And second, right now we would be asked to, after the fact, somehow find a way to exclude that material or set it aside from the other material we collect. We wouldn’t be able to co-mingle it and report it as part of our performance reporting, and we just think that doesn’t make sense.”

The Ministry of the Environment has said producer responsibility organizations were never intended to collect recycling from industrial, commercial, or institutional sources. Municipalities can choose to offer small-business pickup if they wish. London’s mayor says that option is not realistic.

Josh Morgan said the city would have to create an entirely separate system from scratch to serve roughly 500 affected businesses.

“For us to be able to do that, we would have to build an entirely new recycling program from the ground up,” Morgan said. “One, it would be exceptionally costly, and two, we would be in a situation where we’re advantaging some businesses over others, because we were never picking up recycling for all businesses in the city.”

Meanwhile, local business leaders say the transition was poorly communicated. Ian Leishman of the Old South Business Association said small businesses were not adequately considered in the rollout.

“We are quite disappointed because of the lack of planning by the provincial government and the municipal government,” Leishman said. “While the change from the city paying for recycling to the producers paying is a good thing, there wasn’t any thought about how this could negatively impact small businesses. We’re an afterthought now.”

Leishman said some business owners are now exploring collaborative options to secure more affordable private recycling.

Businesses are considering banding together by area to hire a single private recycling provider rather than each securing individual contracts, he said.

For now, with no municipal plan to step in and no service from Circular Materials for businesses, hundreds of London shop owners must make their own recycling arrangements.