Green Propserity is a joint effort by 23 of Ontario's leading environmental organizations to outline an action agenda for the province that we believe will help make Ontario a world leader in green practices and programs. For more information on the groups involved, click here.

Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Canadian Environmental Law Association

Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy

Citizens Environment Alliance

Community Power Fund

Conservation Council of Ontario

David Suzuki Foundation

Earthroots

Ecojustice

Environment North

Environmental Defence

Forest Ethics

Great Lakes United

Greenpeace

Local Food Plus

Ontario Nature

Ontario Smart Growth Network

Ontario Sustainable Energy Association

Pembina Institute

Sierra Club

Toronto Environmental Alliance

Wildlands League

World Wildlife Fund

	Ontario can move from being a throwaway society to a zero waste society.

It's time for companies to take cradle-to-grave responsibility for their products and their packaging waste. Amend the Waste Diversion Act to ensure full extended producer responsibility (EPR).

Right now, municipalities, and municipal taxpayers who pay for waste disposal, have little control over what actually ends up in their garbage.  With Extended Producer Responsibility, this burden is shifted to the actual producers of packaging and products by making them 100% responsible for the costs of dealing with end-of-life products and packaging. This gives companies a strong incentive to improve their product and packaging design, make products less toxic and make products easier to reuse or recycle.

With the current review of the Waste Diversion Act, the Ontario Government is poised to become a leader in transforming Ontario from a throwaway society into a true zero waste society by embracing Extended Producer Responsibility.  A provincial levy on waste disposal can send a powerful signal about avoiding unnecessary waste and re-using valuable resources while at the same time providing revenue to enhance waste diversion programs.
In 2010, the Ontario government should finalize legislative amendments to the Waste Diversion Act that will change our approach to garbage from disposing of waste to recovering valuable resources:

• make individual producers fully responsible for their products and packaging marketed within the residential, institutional, commercial and industrial sectors; 
• require that all producers adhere to strong, enforceable waste collection and diversion targets and ensure there are significant penalties for missing targets;
• ban materials that can be re-used or recycled from disposal;  
• prohibit any expansion of the definition of waste diversion that would include burning or other treatment of waste that results in adverse impacts on human health and the environment 

Further resources:

Options for waste diversion - Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy

Submission on Ontario's proposed Waste Diversion Plan - Toronto Environmental Alliance