there is a lot of lobbying going on in Canada's newest have-not province. And some of it has been successful.
Durham/York are committed to an energy-from-waste (EFW) plant near the Darlington nuclear site. The Brampton EFW seems to work quite nicely, and has done for many years. The Plasco test plant  serving Ottawa could well turn into a full-size facility at some point. It  seems inevitable that at least some Ontario tires will become fuel at some point.
Given this momentum, you can imagine how many well-dressed gentleman and lady lobbyists have been walking the halls of Queen's Park extolling the benefits of counting energy recovery as part of a waste diversion strategy, as they have been here in Vancouver.
So it was time for some clarification on the concept of diversion (heck, even the WDO folks have had trouble with this in the past).
The minister's report notes there was a "robust discussion" on this issue--that is code for "some folks got red in the face, some stamped their feet and other pounded the table". 
While the straight burning of waste is an impossible sell, adding energy recovery has often been seen as a way to make it palatable. The report however, only talks about "material recovery".  That will be counted as diversion, it notes. And it goes on to say any energy recovered would not count towards meeting diversion obligations. That's pretty clear. Pyrolysis for tires and aerobic digestion for organics appear to be fine, however.
The other gorilla has been sitting silent for some time. This would be the huge industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) waste sector, which accounts for the majority of the waste out there. For all the progress made in the past and more recently with the sexy stuff like the blue box, household hazardous waste and electronics, diversion of ICI waste is still in the dark ages.
We can blame the successive Ontario Governments for not enforcing their own 3Rs Regulations, but until something is done about the gap in cost between doing the right thing (diversion) and doing the wrong thing (disposal), it's an uphill battle. The proposed disposal levy is a start.
The hard part will be for Mr. McGuinty to hold his ground when Mike Harris's reincarnation, Tim Hudak,  stands up in the opposition benches and complains about more taxes on long-suffering Ontarions.
We'll be watching.

By Jay Arthur

Well, the future of waste policy in Ontario certainly looks a little different today than it did in the early 2000s.
When the Waste Diversion Act was under development it seemed everyone and his or her dog were making presentation to the powers-that-were. Many of those presenters pointed out some of the more obvious weaknesses in the Act. Some of these submissions were duly recorded in this publication as the Hansard Follies, as I recall.
So it was with some anticipation that we all waited to see if Ontario's Environment Minister John Gerretsen would follow up on the EPR message he has been espousing of late when the mandatory five-year review was concluded.
We all read the speech notes carefully after he made his annual Waste Reduction Week address. It was a bit light in substance, but that was understandable given that his report was almost ready and he wouldn't want to pre-empt it. There was not however, any sign of a retreat from the EPR principle. And that was good.
The 31-page report emerged shortly afterwards, with the meat appearing about  halfway through.
There is some fairly progressive stuff in there, and it seems pretty clear that his ministry has been talking to people and paying attention.
The change of focus to individual producer responsibility opens the door to more flexibility and creativity than that bureaucrat's manifesto known as Bill 90 that spawned the WDA.
The reporting requirements do look a bit onerous however, and the required paperwork could make the gun registry look like a walk in the park.
There are always two 362.8-kilo gorillas in the room when stewardship conversations are taking place. And, to his credit, the minister has addressed them both.
The first, of course, is incineration, although most prefer to promote it as energy recovery. We can get into the actual net gain in energy terms another time, but there is no question