TORONTO - The worst trash offenders in Ontario are generating the weight of a compact car -- per person -- in waste a year and some of the province's smallest communities are posting the lowest recycling rates, the latest data analyzed by The Canadian Press shows.
While the average person is responsible for 385 kilograms of garbage a year -- the weight of a large male grizzly bear -- the top end of the trash-heap scale has some Ontario residents producing almost four times as much waste.
More than 4.8 million tonnes of waste was generated by Ontario residents in 2007 and less than 40 per cent was diverted from landfill, according to figures recently released by Waste Diversion Ontario.
While a handful of municipalities managed to divert more than half of their waste to be recycled and composted, some tiny communities had diversion rates in the single-digit range and dozens of others were below 25 per cent.
The township of Archipelago, a picturesque patchwork of Georgian Bay communities in central Ontario, had the province's highest per capita rate of waste generated in 2007, which was just short of a staggering one and a half tonnes. That's more than what a new Ford Focus or Honda Civic weighs.
Other small municipalities like Grey Highlands, Casey and Central Manitoulin also had average per capita disposal rates of more than a tonne. And they all had poor diversion rates well below the provincial average of 39.23 per cent.
Experts say Ontario is currently the only province where annual figures on waste and recycling, broken down by municipality, are made publicly available.
Ontario's rural and northern communities were by far the worst offenders when it came to low diversion rates and waste generated.
While that's disappointing it reflects the unique challenges those municipalities face, said Environment Minister John Gerretsen.
"Obviously we're concerned with the rates up in northern Ontario. Perhaps the (diversion rates) aren't as high as they are elsewhere but we have to keep it somewhat in perspective," he said.
"The amount of waste that is produced in southern Ontario, where you have 10 times the population base, is a lot more."
The communities with the lowest recycling rates typically have populations that are more spread out, making curbside collection more difficult and costly. While more depot-based programs exist in those areas, those efforts count on residents to put in the time and effort to get in their vehicles and haul their waste to be recycled.
Rural communities also have fewer nearby customers to sell their recycled materials to. Having recycled material trucked long distances is often not cost-effective or is simply counterproductive in terms of trying to protect the environment.
In the grand scheme of things, it's the bigger municipalities that create the bulk of the province's trash, Gerretsen said, but they also have better diversion rates because they offer more opportunities to recycle.
Waste generated in Ontario communities with populations under 100,000 represented only about 17 per cent of the provincial total.
Of the province's larger municipalities, Durham region had the best diversion rate, keeping 47.7 per cent of its waste from landfills. Just a few percentage points back were York region, Waterloo region, Hamilton and Toronto.
Many rural municipalities also have diversion rates well below the provincial average because their governments are finding it's more cost-effective to dump waste rather than recycle it, said Glenda Gies, executive director of Waste Diversion Ontario, which runs the province's recycling program.
"If disposal capacity is available and relatively cheap then the local municipality may be less motivated to implement comprehensive diversion programs," she said.
"Local municipalities are making decisions that are to the benefit of their property-tax payers and they're not implementing comprehensive recycling programs."
In communities where diversion rates are high, a common denominator beyond good recycling rates of paper, glass, metals and plastic is the collection of organics like yard waste and household scraps for composting, Gies said.
Municipalities are also driving up diversion rates by charging residents for the trash they throw away or only making collections biweekly, she added.
The province is currently working through a review of how to reform the Blue Box program. It has hinted that it's seeking a bold revamp including extended producer responsibility, which would make the business world pay for the full cost of the recycling program.
Gerretsen said he's also looking forward to a future where products and packaging are designed with sustainability in mind, and anything that can't be recycled through conventional means could be returned to the manufacturer.
The costs for recycling are currently shared 50-50 by businesses and municipalities.
Giving the business world cradle-to-grave responsibility for their products and making them pay for the recycling system could help improve diversion rates in rural communities since businesses would be forced to meet targets or face penalties, Gies said.
"Hopefully they would be motivated to ensure reasonable service to all areas of the province and it's possible that under that sort of scenario ... rural and northern areas would see an improvement in their diversion," she said.
The non-profit Recycling Council of Ontario wants the province to become a leader in developing innovative recycling technologies, which would have spinoff benefits.
"Bolstering recycling locally can generate jobs, so there's an opportunity for us to use this environmental platform to actually boost the economy," said executive director Jo-Anne St. Godard.
"We're going to get to point where we have to ask if the Blue Box is doing the best that it can and are there other things we have to do ... to really address the other half of this waste that's still going to disposal."
Plastics diversion continued to be a big problem in 2007, with only 22 per cent of the mostly non-biodegradable materials being diverted from landfills. The diversion rate did not improve compared to 2006 and was up only two per cent compared to 2005.
