RPRA approves Stewardship Ontario’s plans to implement simplified steward fee-setting

RPRA has approved changes to Stewardship Ontario’s (SO) program performance reporting plan, which will allow SO to implement its simplified steward fee-setting methodology. Read the approval letter.

In February 2022, RPRA approved, with conditions, SO’s proposed addendum to the Blue Box Program Wind-up Plan to implement a simplified steward fee-setting methodology during the legacy Blue Box Program’s transition period. The revised methodology eliminates the need for most stewards to report supply-to-market data to SO.

RPRA imposed two conditions to address concerns about program performance evaluation due to the loss of steward supply data, which was the primary concern raised during consultation.

On April 8, 2022, SO submitted two plans to RPRA to satisfy the conditions:

1. The Plan for Calculating the Program Recovery Rate, which outlines the cooperation between SO and participating communities to implement annual curbside waste characterization studies, and describes the method used to determine the tonnage of Blue Box material generated in the market.
2. The Plan to Address the Continuation of Bale Audits, which describes the method used to calculate the weight of recovered Blue Box materials and confirms that physical audits of bales of recovered Blue Box material at material recovery facilities are not necessary for RPRA’s reporting on the performance of the Blue Box Program.

The plans are available upon request by emailing info@rpra.ca.

The implementation of the revised fee-setting methodology means that most stewards will not be required to submit detailed material reports to SO starting this year and throughout the remaining years of the program. For information on the implementation, visit SO’s website. For operational inquiries or questions about reporting requirements and timelines, contact SO.

For clarity, the revised methodology only applies to steward fee-setting for the legacy Blue Box Program operated by SO under the Blue Box Program Plan and Waste Diversion Transition Act, 2016. This does not impact reporting or paying Registry fees to RPRA as a producer under the Blue Box Regulation under the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, 2016. Learn more about the regulation and producer requirements.