The Blue Box and Aluminum Soft Drink Cans
One troubling aspect of the Blue Box system (BBS) is that approximately one billion – one thousand million – aluminum soft drink (SD) cans are not recycled by Ontarians each year and are being sent to landfills and other disposal facilities.
The recovery and recycling of aluminum cans are important for several reasons. First, recycling these containers conserves very large amounts of energy and raw materials. Second, the extraction and processing of the raw materials needed to make new cans release large quantities of pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHGs). In 2003, the World Watch Institute estimated that making 1 million tonnes of aluminum cans from virgin materials requires 4.95 million tonnes of bauxite ore and the energy equivalent of 35 million barrels of crude oil. Recycling the cans, in comparison, saves all of the bauxite and more than 75 per cent of the energy, and avoids production of about 75 per cent of the pollutants. Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough electricity to run a laptop computer for 4 hours.
The aluminum industry also significantly affects climate change. One 1992 Environment Canada report estimated that the aluminum sector in Canada was producing GHGs equivalent to 6 per cent of Canada’s entire output of carbon dioxide because the manufacturing process emits perfluorocarbons (PFCs) – and the impact of PFCs is 6,500 to 9,200 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.*
Initially, aluminum SD can recovery rates for the BBS were very low. One 1989 study estimated that only 5 per cent of aluminum SD cans sold in Ontario were recycled in the BBS. However, there were steady gains throughout the early and mid-1990s and, in our 1998 annual report, the ECO approvingly cited a study stating that approximately 35 per cent of cans sold in Ontario were recycled in the BBS in 1997. In contrast, most Canadian jurisdictions with deposit-refund systems regularly capture 65-85 per cent of cans and other SD containers sold and some beverage container deposit-return systems recover much more.
In 2002, the Brewers of Ontario reported that more than 91 per cent of the beer cans and 98 per cent of beer bottles sold at the Beer Store chain it runs were returned for deposit.
Based on audits of residential garbage, Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) estimates that only 42 per cent of aluminum SD cans in 2002 were recovered in the BBS. This means that approximately one billion cans – worth about $25.5 million – escaped collection in the BBS and may have ended up in landfills. The manufacturing of rolled-aluminum sheet to make those cans is equivalent to 900 billion watt-hours of energy, equalling the total output required to power 125,000 Ontario homes for one year. In addition, about 54,000 tonnes of GHG emissions could be avoided if all of these cans were recycled.
Drawing on historical data for Ontario SD container sales, the ECO estimates that between 9 and 11 billion aluminum cans produced in the residential and the industrial, commercial and institutional (IC&I) sectors were sent to disposal facilities by Ontarians between 1994 and 2003. Meanwhile Michigan State, which has had a deposit-refund system for containers since 1976, passed legislation in March 2004 allowing inspectors to ban imports of solid waste from Ontario if the shipments contain large quantities of recyclable containers, and in May 2004, secured additional resources from the US federal government to begin enforcing this law beginning in October 2004.
There are many factors that partly explain why the Ontario BBS has never achieved the high SD container recovery rates that were predicted in 1985 when the BBS was formally announced by MOE. As reported in the ECO’s 2001/2002 annual report, recycling programs in the IC&I sectors (including apartment buildings) are underdeveloped and, in some cases, non-existent, in contravention of O. Regs. 102/94 and 103/94 under the Environmental Protection Act. Some experts also point out that away-from-home consumption of soft drinks has increased significantly in the past decade and only a small proportion of these containers are recycled because infrastructure is underdeveloped.
Moreover, much more needs to be done to educate the public about the need to recycle aluminum SD cans and other beverage containers in the BBS. The ECO has learned that some aluminum SD cans generated in the IC&I sectors are being recycled by service clubs and other collectors. But this is taking place despite the lack of enforcement of O. Regs. 102/94 and 103/94 by MOE and could divert aluminum cans from collection in the residential BBS.
The ECO believes that MOE should set an ambitious recovery rate for aluminum cans based on recovery rates that are achieved by deposit-refund systems in other Canadian jurisdictions. To this end, the ECO commends MOE for directing the WDO in early 2004 to increase diversion rates for residential recyclables to 60 per cent by 2008. However, unless MOE sets a strong target for the IC&I sectors and establishes consequences for non-compliance, it seems unlikely that aluminum SD can recovery rates will significantly improve in the short term. * Since the mid-1990s, Canadian aluminum manufacturers have made significant reductions in their discharges of GHGs because they have shifted production to newer facilities. For example, in 2003 Alcan reported that its worldwide operations had reduced their GHG emissions by approximately 1.45 million tonnes per year in 2001 and 2002, an overall cut of 15 per cent compared to 1999 levels.
| This is an article from the 2003/04 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2004. "The Waste Diversion Program for Blue Box Waste." Choosing our Legacy, ECO Annual Report, 2003-04. Toronto, ON : Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 81-82.
