Neither the province nor municipalities want to pay the mounting
costs out of general taxpayer revenue. Instead, there is a strong
consensus that hazardous goods should be dealt with through
extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs. Such programs are
already in place in many countries for many types of products.
Ontario has an EPR for tires, for electronic waste, for paint,
etc.
In principle, an EPR should send the right signals to the right
people. The people who make and buy hazardous products should pay
for their ultimate disposal, rather than dumping that cost on to
the general public. If paying the full cost of legal disposal makes
these products less attractive to consumers, so much the better,
and less-hazardous products should gain market share.
This is the theory behind Waste Diversion Ontario, a
special-purpose organization set up to design and run EPR programs
for a wide variety of hazardous wastes. WDO collects fees
from end-users and uses the money to subsidize hazardous waste
collection and recycling. Generally, the programs have run
smoothly, if not perfectly- less electronic waste, for example, is
being collected than had been hoped.
On July 1, 2010, WDO began collecting an Eco fee on thousands of
hazardous consumer products under the Municipal Hazardous or
Special Waste Program. This went anything but smoothly.
No one seemed to understand what the fee was for or how it worked.
Consumers balked at yet another charge that looked like a
tax. Retailers revolted. It was particularly bad
planning to have introduced the fee on same day the HST kicked
in.
Ontario environment Minister, John Garretson, wrote a scathing
letter to Gemma Zecchini, head of Stewardship Ontario, on
July 13. Her response is summarized here. WDO raced to make the eco-fees
more accurate, consistent, and understandable, but it was too
late.
On July 19, Canadian Tire announced that it would not charge eco
fees to its customers until a better system was in place.
There had been far too many mistakes
made in charging the fees (e.g., fee discrepancies, over-charging
customers), and customers were blaming the
retailer.
The eco fee structure imposed by Waste Diversion Ontario, a
government agency, was complex, with interpretation left largely up
to retailers - and leading to inconsistencies. Also on July
19, Stewardship Ontario, seemingly surprised that consumers wanted
to know more about how eco fees work, announced that it would work
towards making eco fees accurate, consistent and
understandable.
On July 20, Garretsen announced that he had
suspended the fees on most hazardous consumer products for 90
days.
The Ministry of the Environment will use the time to work with
Stewardship Ontario retailers and consumers to redesign the
system. In the interim, taxpayers will pay for the expanded
waste diversion program -$4-$5 million for the 90 day consultation
period alone. I hope the money isn't coming from the ministry's
operations budget.
Originally published in Saxe Environmental Law and Litigation, reprinted with the kind permission
of the author, Dr. Diane Saxe