An Ontario city is shelving the idea of taking on Toronto’s trash as Canada’s largest city continues to look for long-term solutions regarding its landfill capacity.
The City of Peterborough’s waste management committee voted Monday to receive Toronto’s request for information, meaning it will not take further action on it.
In February, a Toronto staff member emailed several municipalities, including Peterborough, to gauge their interest in assisting Canada’s largest city with its trash issues. Toronto’s main landfill is projected to reach capacity by 2035, and city officials are exploring alternative methods of waste management.
In the email, the city official wrote Toronto was “gathering information on potential interest from municipalities” to partner with the city on several initiatives. Those include accepting residual waste from the City of Toronto, selling an existing active landfill to Toronto, becoming a host for Toronto to build a new landfill, and/or partnering to either build a new landfill or expand an existing one.
The email included a link to a questionnaire for interested municipalities to complete and return to Toronto by June 30. On June 19, the Toronto official sent a “friendly reminder” email about the deadline. It was then brought to Peterborough’s waste management committee, which shelved it on Monday.
Toronto’s Green Lane Landfill near St. Thomas, Ont., which it has owned since 2007, will not be able to keep up with the amount of waste the city’s growing population is producing, staff have warned.
Toronto sends an average of 450,000 tonnes of waste per year to the landfill, roughly the equivalent of three CN Towers full of trash.
While the city has managed to slightly extend Green Lane’s lifespan through contract renegotiations and improved compaction practices, the clock is ticking.
Last year alone, the city handled close to 830,000 tonnes of waste across all streams, and Toronto has no suitable land within its borders to build a new site.
Competition to find another site will be fierce because a 2021 provincial study found that by 2034, there will be no remaining landfill capacity in Ontario. Furthermore, provincial legislation introduced in 2020 allows municipalities to veto any proposed landfill site within 3.5 kilometres of their residential boundaries, further limiting Toronto’s already slim options.
The city has a public survey underway in which it asks a series of questions, including implementing recycling programs, donation drives and energy-from-waste, which involves converting garbage to electricity or heat by burning it at high temperatures.
The consultation period is open until June 29.