By Jay Arthur

I keep telling myself that I am dreaming. But there is little doubt now.
In a few years, maybe sooner, the municipal taxpayers in Canada's largest province could be off the financial hook when it comes to recycling.
Hard to believe, isn't it?
All those years banging their heads against the wall at Queen's Park have, it seems, finally paid off for the municipalities.
It's strange. Anyone, anywhere in the world makes a statement about plastic bags and it's on news wires all over the place. And then we get all the predictable responses from industry and from environmental groups.
And yet, when Ontario's Environment Minister John Gerretsen announced he wanted industry to pay all the blue box costs within five years, where were the headlines?
Oh sure, there was coverage in the trade publications (including this one, I noted), but I don't recall any stories in the major media.
The coverage about tanking recycling markets has been everywhere, but you'd have to look very hard to find any mention of the fact that this should be industry's problem exclusively down the road.
(When of course it actually will be industry's problem  is the big question, but I am going with five years as the longest we should have to wait.)
This month, the mandarins at Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) have come up with a report. It responds to Mr. Gerretsen's request for a review of the blue box program, including the move towards real extended producer responsibility (EPR).
And following the consultation that the report used as a basis for its findings, consultation on the report itself is now taking place.
There's a lot of juicy stuff in this report, including the notion that up to 10% of the blue box material could be burned for its energy value--and counted as recovery (notwithstanding the current Ontario policy on these things and the anti-incineration troops who will no doubt make their presence felt).

The WDO report also tells us, however, and not surprisingly, that while some stakeholders think that it's high time for full EPR, others are promoting what is euphemistically termed the "shared responsibility model."
Indeed, the original Blue Box Program Plan was based on it. Providing people with a way to keep consumer products and packaging out of the landfill was, to use another term much in vogue, a "partnership" between industry and municipalities.
While there has been considerable discussion about exactly how much of a partnership it really is and how much "share" industry is paying, there is still that basic question that screams out to be answered.
Since when was it the responsibility of the municipality to collect this stuff anyway?  It has been for years the custom of communities to collect waste and find a place to manage it and pay for it collectively. But that's about maintaining basic levels of public heath, not about getting the raw materials for secondary products back to industry.
It still amazes me how municipalities got conned into this recycling game to begin with.
So this arrogant position that says it is a shared responsibility is, well, garbage.
And it is pretty clear that Mr. G. feels the same way, although he is far too much of a gentlemen to put it that way.
Assuming this EPR ship cannot be turned around by industry lobbyists, by 2014 it will all be on the stewards' tab, even if some municipalities continue to collect the blue box as contractors, as they will be doing with electronics and household hazardous waste.
The current free fall in recycling markets is just the thing to bring a little reality check to the future full funders of the program.
Given the convoluted payment formula, industry stewards won't actually see the hit from today's plunging revenues (and hence sky-rocketing net costs) for another three years. By that time, the markets will likely be back to normal.
So whatever method is used to get them to 100% from the current theoretical 50%, their fees will already be preloaded by Year Three with the fallout from the 2009 meltdown.
And who knows, maybe the other stewards will be able to get the newspapers to put some cash on the table.
Oh, now I AM dreaming.