Last December (2020), Bluewater Recycling Association (BRA) broke new ground in Ontario residential recycling processing by installing six new Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)-enabled robotic arms in their Material Recovery Facility (MRF). The investment was driven by the need to reduce reliance on hard-to-retain manual sorters and deal with a material mix...
Transition to an Individual Producer Responsibility (IPR) framework, China Sword policies, and COVID-19 are all contributing to a challenging and uncertain environment for Ontario municipalities operating blue box programs. Despite this, municipalities continue to deliver services and maintain program performance. To help ensure continued efficiency and effectiveness of recycling systems...
Faced with a new processing RFP, Dufferin County sought to understand the costs to manage increasing amounts of bagged recyclables, and whether it would be more cost-effective to debag at the curb or process bagged materials at the MRF. Dufferin provides single stream recycling collection in Blue Boxes, with the...
For the second year in a row, net costs of the Blue Box program rose dramatically. Since 2016, gross costs have increased relatively steadily, while revenues have plummeted from $112 M in 2017 to the lowest revenue on record of only $55 M in 2019. This dramatic decline in revenue...
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on people’s lives and purchasing habits, but the one product that seemed to benefit from the pandemic and flew off the shelves before we even understood what the full impact of COVID-19 was … toilet paper. This basic necessity has a close connection...
The Region of Niagara spent the last two years investigating an innovative idea to use recycled glass in bioretention stormwater systems. If successful, this would create a secondary market for recycled glass, and provide an alternative source of the sand component in engineered bio-soil. The project was first detailed in...
Responding to the need to clean up their fibre commodities to meet the increasingly higher demands of the end markets, EWSWA decided to upgrade their fibre line by installing an optical sorter to remove “browns” (cardboard and boxboard), containers and other contamination from its newsprint bales (Sorted Residential Paper #56...
Historically, the CIF has advocated that municipalities split material sales revenue between themselves and their contractor, provided the municipality has sufficient tonnage to warrant the extra administrative work. This approach was intended to mitigate the impact of shifting commodity prices on contractors and incentivize them to maximize the value of...
We all know the pandemic is impacting nearly every aspect of daily life. This week, we explore how our collective changes in behaviour are affecting the quality, quantity and composition of materials arriving at Ontario material recovery facilities (MRFs), and what those facilities are doing to address this new reality. As...
Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March, there’s been a noticeable increase in the price of Old Corrugated Cardboard (OCC). In this week's blog, we try to understand what's driving current trends, whether or not the trends are likely to last, and how it’s impacting operations. Knowing how end...
For this weeks blog, we're trying something new! Watch the video or scroll down for the full text. If you like this format, send your feedback to communications@thecif.ca. Contamination rates prompted Northumberland to act During Waste Management Master Planning in 2014, Northumberland County identified a need to shift from single stream bagged...
In the case of plastics, COVID-19 is adding to the list of challenges already faced by plastic re-processors. “Virgin plastic resins are at a record low as the price for oil-based feedstocks have fallen dramatically and there is a proliferation of gas-based feedstocks now available in the marketplace.” — Eadaoin Quinn, Director,...
Interested in signing up for the Mobile EPS densification and collection service? Here is a step by step guide of what to expect. Step 1: Buy or rent a sea can (20 or 40 foot) Participating municipalities have purchased units for between $2,100 for a 20 ft. and $2,700 for 40 ft. Delivery...
In 2018, 78,076 tonnes of clear and mixed coloured glass were reported as being marketed to end users according to the RPRA Datacall. The majority of this volume was marketed to NexCycle Industries. The combined factors of the proximity to Ontario MRFs and their ability to manage post-consumer material has...
For years, the CIF has published the monthly CIF Price Sheet which highlights prices reported by municipalities for marketed, largely post-consumer, residential materials such as metals, glass, plastics and fibres. As part of the transition of Ontario’s Blue Box Program to individual producer responsibility the CIF has been directed to...
