On January 1st 2026, the City of Ottawa handed over recycling collection responsibilities to Circular Materials, a non-profit producer responsibility organization, and their contractor Miller Waste.

This is part of an Ontario-wide shift to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), where producers, instead of municipalities, become responsible for collecting and recycling the products that they produce, including packaging. The aim is to incentivize paper and packaging producers to use materials more efficiently and shift the financial burden of waste collection and recycling away from taxpayers.

CAFES welcomes the move for further producer responsibility which has been in the plans since 2016, but questions the effectiveness of the system when the government of Ontario has recently severely weakened EPR requirements for producers.

In theory, shifting to EPR should result in better waste diversion and reduction. Unfortunately, the Ontario government’s September 2025 amendments to EPR legislation will reduce the effectiveness. These amendments delayed the implementation of mandatory recovery targets, removed recycling collection from multi-residential buildings and public spaces, and reduced the recovery target for flexible plastic. Most alarmingly, the amendments allow “energy recovery” (aka incineration) to count towards 15% of diversion targets! With incineration as an option for waste diversion, we are concerned about where our recyclables are going.

Under the new system, pretty much all plastic packaging including thin plastic, plastic bags, bubblewrap, food containers and styrofoam is now admissible into the blue bin (but was not previously for Ottawa). CAFES is questioning where this is all ending up - it is hard to imagine that Circular Materials has already set up new recyling facilities for all this waste material.

CAFES has reached out to Circular Materials and Miller Waste to find out more about what's going on behind the scenes of our new recycling system. To learn more about the changes in place, visit the Circular Materials website.