Ontario is weak on litter and a new law could make that situation a lot worse.  

September 4 is the last date for public comment on the Province of Ontario's proposed Waste Reduction Act, legislation that is silent on litter. We believe this is the time to be hands-on and address littering head-on.  



Bill 91 in Ontario, the Waste Reduction Act, leaves a loophole you can drive a truck through and then litter out its window afterwards. No self-respecting environmentalist would condone a province-wide waste reduction law that doesn't include a plan for dealing with littering.

As this photo validates, Ontario operates under an antiquated, hands-off approach to littering. The new bill attempts to write-off litter altogether by relying on the insidious industry term, "end of life waste".  This insider jargon means industry and government can legally ignore the issue of waste that is littered, such as the materials seen above, clogging the drains within a few meters of Ontario's laughably ineffective litter sign, advertising a law that is rarely enforced and routinely ignored.

Those chip bags, food wrappers, cups and gum on the ground – they may look dead, but they are not at the “end of life”. The bin is their coffin.  If they do not land in a bin, legislators let producers off the hook. This dimly lit view has led to Ontario’s failure to reach its 60 per cent diversion target. (Currently at 25%) It’s the reason why littering continues to be pervasive and growing in Ontario and why the provincial government gives the issue of litter as waste zero of its attention.

Fifty-five per cent of all littering is deliberate. The rest is accidental. Regardless, all littering is illegal.

I believe Ontario should deal with littering as it deals with waste reduction and diversion. A good start would be to delete all references to “end-of-life” waste and just call it what it all is: “waste.”

How can anyone credibly say that litter and waste don’t fit together?

You would be helping the litter prevention cause by telling the Ministry of Environment before September 4, 2013 that you object to litter being omitted from Ontario's proposed Waste Reduction Act. A simple sentence like that is all you need to say. Contact information, comment form and details about Bill 91 are here.

A waste management expert agrees it is prudent for me to sound the alarm over Bill 91, the proposed Waste Reduction Act in Ontario.  The legislation aims to change how we recycle in Ontario, involving waste producers more and setting up a hybrid system of third-party agency and producer self-policing. 

Ontario has not mastered the art of diverting waste. Far from it, collectively only 23 per cent of our total waste is saved from going to landfill. Nor has Ontario shown an acumen for making less waste, government ministries being among the bigger offenders. In Ontario, recycling programs vary depending on where you are in the province. The government shies away from setting uniform high standards for municipalities and waste producers.    

In fact, this legislation offloads much of the power to bodies outside of the Ministry of the Environment.  
That worries me.  So does the fact that the waste management sector is pushing hard for incineration waste-to-energy programs to count as “Recovery”, the Fourth “R” and to embrace 4Rs, as has occurred in the European Union.

In Ontario, we don’t need 4Rs in this bill. 3Rs are plenty if you do them right.  Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.  We should be sticking to our course of defining what it means to have the best recycling collection program in the world in our homegrown blue box approach. Set sustainability targets. Force places like banks, service stations, construction sites and public spaces to offer recycling.  We all know where the likely litter hosts are. Get full ICI participation from Industry, Commerce and Institutions. The province should be initiating awareness-raising campaigns and best practices, doing everything possible to elevate public thinking and action.

It would not hurt to tell the Ministry of Environment that we support 3Rs not 4 in Ontario’s proposed Waste Reduction Act to counteract the industry lobby, you can comment on Bill 91 here until September 4.

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Another problem with Bill 91: It shuts the door to new deposit-return systems.  Any legislator worth his or her environmental salt will want to stand up and defend deposit-refund systems as part of the mix in Ontario, some of which involve small fees of a few pennies.  

Impetus for the cumbersome Bill 91 came from the government’s desire to be forever off the hot seat after its stewardship agency badly botched the roll out of eco-fees in 2010. Some of those eco-fees were quite steep.  Those costs would be built into the product pricing under Bill 91 and summarized on the price tag.

The fee I want to preserve is the effective, tried-and-true, deposit-return system.  Total recycling results in less litter and near perfect diversion.

Ontario Beer Stores show a 99% recycling rate for materials returned to their locations.  It’s a simple system that everyone understands.  Deposit-return has a place in the waste reduction regime.  No one’s going to quibble over a few pennies extra on a can of pop or a pack of smokes.

In the absolute political fever to erase eco-fees from the electoral memory and from the books, Ontario policy writers were not able to recommend viable deposit-return schemes such as are running in other provinces.

In a previous blog here one year ago I called for the establishment of a “litter school” administered by the courts. (“What governments could do”, August 20, 2012). Lo and behold today I read that a city is proceeding with something along the same lines.  So I’m not nuts after all, at least not for thinking this could and should be done. 

In Guyana they propose to fast track what they call environment crimes along a newly created branch of the law and order tree, an environment court.  This is where they will send an entire cross section of litter pulp, from two-bit litterers to big-time dumpers.  All will be trotted before a judge who will decide how firmly to apply the newly trumped up cleanliness laws which aim to make a dent in the garbage strewn landscape.

Fines and ticketing will be the order of the day once the Guyanese public has had time to become accustomed to the idea.  “Intensified public awareness” will occur during the grace period.  Reasonable and sound approaches, but how to ensure that litterers pay the fines?

In Rio de Janeiro the zero waste “Lixo Zero” cuts to the heart of enforcement by recording tax roll numbers of those ticketed for littering.  If the fine goes unpaid it will affect the offender’s ability to use credit cards or obtain loans. This new regime is being rolled out after a 51-day postponement while the city hosted a massive Catholic youth event, where pilgrims received litterbags upon arrival and participated in what appears to have been a litter-free papal visit and World Youth Day – a first for any city.

While some jurisdictions tiptoe around the edges of the littering dilemma, others dive right in and put the public mind to the task of creating litter prevention measures.  It doesn’t help that people don’t separate their garbage in Rio. The culture built up around people throwing trash on the street has raised sufficient alarm as to spawn a meaningful drive among Zero Wasters to tackle littering head-on. With government’s support they may well do it.

I don’t know about you, but I would definitely watch “Litter Court” if it became a TV show.

My corner was hit by an ashtray dumper. Just one street over at the stop sign leading into my neighbourhood, someone thought it an ideal place to empty a messy pile of 80 butts on the road.  Ideal, because no one is likely to see you. It’s near a sewer grate. A perfect chute for rainwater washed cigarette toxins to enter the ecosystem.

Who does this kind of thing? Especially with all that is now known about the fragility of the planet?  Research is sparse, but thanks to studies funded by big tobacco companies we know quite a bit about the nature of the littering smoker.

Smokers do not like to see ashtray dumping any more than I do.  In fact they are appalled by the behavior of these ignorant smokers. Yet they wouldn't think twice about flicking a butt to the curb if an ashtray wasn't in sight. Smokers do not define that act as littering.  To them it's a legitimate means of disposal.  That’s just how it's done, so they think.

When they grind, stomp and mash a lit butt into the pavement or against the side of a building, flick it into a puddle, gulley or snow bank; they believe they are doing a good turn. They are preventing a fire.

Almost double the number of smokers litter than do not: 65/35 out of 100. They give a number of pat excuses for their tobacco littering. No point in repeating their excuses, far more interesting to peer behind the cop-outs to find the real reason why people litter, smokers with even greater proclivity.

Breaking science offers up a few clues. Two telling studies may help unlock the mystery and identify markers of a predisposition to littering.

Ph.D. biz whiz Andy Yap's work on power stances correlates one's physical space and body language to the tendency to break rules. A series of tests proved that one's cortisol and testosterone levels changed with the adoption of Yap's two sets of body configurations. In turn, feelings of power and entitlement grew within the subject’s mind when after sitting or standing in the classic “Type A” personality postures Yap's team developed. Occupying a vast space behind a big desk or in the big front seat of a vehicle, for example, Yap shows, increases the likelihood of that person speeding, pilfering from the office or cheating.

I contacted Andy Yap. He quickly wrote back to validate my hypothesis that his work can aptly be applied to littering.

Sheila, he says, “I think that the psychology of power does have some implications for littering. If littering works the same way as other corrupt and anti-social behaviors, then power would cause people to do whatever they want and disregard the rules and laws there are in place.

“Anything that creates this feeling of power, be it posture, actual rank, or simply recalling a time one felt powerful can create strong feelings of power.”


Also three separate studies, in New Zealand, US and England, are rewriting our understanding of what causes the unruly child as a result of looking into maternal smoking in pregnancy. They conclude mom’s prenatal smoking is related to "conduct disorders" in those children.  Team leader Gordon Harold, PhD, of the University of Leicester in England, reports their independent findings in JAMA Psychiatry 2013.  

What if we could predict and had early detection for litterers?  In my imaginary litter-less world, if your mom stupidly smoked during pregnancy, if you strut your power stances and the interior space around you is oversized, or if you lacked experiences with nature through environmental education, you’d automatically be rolled into the Litter Prevention Program regardless of your age.

Non-littering behaviors can be learned.