Like much of the western world, Canada is facing a crisis in waste disposal as landfills reach their capacity. In Ontario, a live countdown gives municipal landfills just eight more years before they are full. We urgently need to reduce our garbage.
The scramble for a solution has governments considering and even approving questionable alternatives like incineration and opening new or dormant landfills in rural areas.
Colleagues and I conducted a study between 2022 and 2024 with a non-profit service provider called the St. James Town Community Corner in Toronto, and found an overlooked opportunity for greater waste diversion among renters in multi-residential buildings.
Our research team included Trisha Einmann, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Guelph, Alaa Mohamed, a client engagement worker with The Neighbourhood Organization and Aravind Joseph, a former co-ordinator with The Neighbourhood Organization.
St.James Town is a vibrant, densely populated neighbourhood with a high proportion of immigrants, racialized people and those with lower-than-average household incomes. At its core are 19 rental towers of 14 to 30 storeys that house about 18,500 people.
Policymakers must bring multi-residential buildings fully into the effort to divert household waste from landfill, so that communities like St. James Town can be part of the solution.
Residential building waste
There is a glaring need to increase the amount of waste diverted from landfills in Ontario, where the institutional commercial and industrial sector generates 60 per cent of the province’s waste, yet the sector’s diversion rate is only 15 per cent.
The residential sector also merits attention. Here, the overall diversion rate of 50 per cent is highly uneven between multi-residential buildings and single family dwellings.
While nearly 47 per cent of Torontonians reside in multi-residential buildings of five storeys or more, they divert just 27 per cent of their waste from landfills, compared to 61 per cent for single-family homes.
Our research
In our study, we focused on two St. James Town high-rises: a social housing building and a privately owned rental building.
We conducted a resident survey, focus groups and interviews with experts and authorities to understand residents’ values, practices and challenges related to household waste.
The vast majority of our 103 survey respondents — 93 per cent — agreed or strongly agreed that sorting waste is very important; 91 per cent agreed that it protects the environment; and 78 per cent said it is part of their daily routine. These figures were virtually the same for private and social-housing renters, and were higher for immigrants than those born in Canada.
Just over half of our respondents, however, found it inconvenient or difficult to sort waste, and the challenges they identified confirmed the spatial and infrastructural hurdles documented elsewhere.
In high-rises like those in St. James Town, which were built before waste separation programs were commonplace, the typical disposal option is the single, narrow garbage chute on each floor and tall bins in an outdoor enclosure for bulky waste or recyclables. Apartments typically lack space to store sorted waste.
Landlords are off the hook
Another barrier to better waste management was the lack of managerial willingness to work with concerned residents, a crucial ingredient in achieving greater waste diversion in multi-residential buildings.
In the private building, the fundamental problem was the absence of managerial commitment to waste diversion, making it impossible for residents to divert waste there.
This is rooted in past municipal decisions and current provincial policy. City service obligates the separate collection of all major waste types. In 2009, the City of Toronto allowed private multi-residential buildings to choose private instead of municipal waste services so that they could avoid the expense and hassle of collecting organics.
Multi-residential buildings that contract with private haulers (40 per cent in Toronto) become subject to the regulation governing waste in the commercial and industrial sector, which omits organics and calls for “reasonable efforts” to participate in recycling.
This weak wording and minimal enforcement by the province allows the hollowest of gestures toward recycling on the part of landlords.
In the privately owned building in our study, there were outdoor blue bins, but no separate bins for non-recyclable trash, and the blue bins were observed to contain all manner of waste. Unsurprisingly, we saw the hauling company combining blue bin and compactor content together, though the property manager claimed otherwise.
Participants at both buildings complained of an information vacuum. In the private building, 63 per cent of survey respondents reported disposing of organics in the trash chute at least some of the time; for recyclables this was 28 per cent.
The fact that people were sorting organics before putting them in the trash chute suggests they believed it will be properly sorted by the waste management company after collection. This belief was also shared by one of the maintenance staff at the building who deals with waste.
This echoes a tendency observed elsewhere, and likely reflects a misguided belief that the waste will eventually be sorted at a facility.
Many respondents told us they aren’t being properly directed on where to put any of the different forms of waste, including hazardous items. For example, in the private building, there was nothing to tell them that there’s no organics collection, or what can and cannot be recycled.
Misplaced or unsorted waste reflects the lack of information residents receive. Without stronger regulations, landlords have little incentive to invest in waste management to keep recycling separate from trash.
Waste management and housing conditions
With a savings-above-all approach to waste management, the practices of some can make surroundings unpleasant for others. In disposal areas and other common spaces, residents frequently complained of the smell and of cockroaches from organic waste piled up by the chutes, or bedbugs from furniture and other items left in hallways.
Some were reluctant to have visitors. Some also worried about batteries in the garbage, a justified concern given that 71 per cent of survey participants across both buildings sometimes dispose of batteries in the trash or blue bins.
Tenants are often fearful to take such concerns to landlords or government.
There are, of course, other major contributors to landfill waste that we should not overlook: the over-production of non-recyclable plastics and under-regulation of the industrial, commercial and institutional sector.
But policymakers must also recognize the challenges facing renters in multi-residential buildings. Failing to address these will result in more waste ending up in ever-growing landfills.
Lisa Kowalchuk receives funding from the University of Guelph Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada institutional grant.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
