Celebrating One Year as RPRA
On November 30, 2016, the Ontario Government proclaimed the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, 2016 (RRCEA) and the Waste Diversion Transition Act, 2016 (WDTA), which were enacted by the Waste-Free Ontario Act, 2016.
The RRCEA and WDTA established the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority and outlined new legislative framework to hold producers individually responsible and accountable for their products and packaging at end-of-life.
One year later, we have accomplished much towards advancing a circular economy and beginning the journey towards our goal of achieving a waste-free Ontario, including:
- Launching the Registry Project to build out a database to collect information from obligated parties (such as manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers) to track the amount of products and packaging entering the Ontario market and, equally important, to track the amount of materials being diverted from landfill and recycled and reprocessed for reuse in new production processes
- Overseeing the process of winding up the Used Tires Program to individual producer responsibility
- Overseeing the process of amending the Blue Box Program Plan in order to transition to individual producer responsibility
- Establishing a new Board of Directors
- Establishing a new Executive Management Team and staff
- Moving to new and expanded office space
- Establishing new organizational policies, procedures and processes
- Engaging and establishing new relationships with stakeholders
While there is much to celebrate, there is much more work to do. With the strong momentum from the past year, the deep commitment of our staff and Board, and the support of our partners at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, our industry and environmental NGO stakeholders, a waste-free Ontario is more than imaginable.