Waste in Canada

Waste management in Canada

Waste management in Canada (Government of Canada, 2022):

• Around 97% sent to landfills, 3% incinerated

• Provinces and territories independently set up policies and programs for waste reduction. They are also in charge of approving and monitoring waste management facilities and operations, namely incinerators, landfills and composting facilities.

• Municipalities are in charge of collecting, recycling, composting, and disposing residential waste

• Residential and non-residential solid waste is managed by municipalities and private waste management firms

The federal government controls international and interprovincial movements of hazardous waste and hazardous recyclable material and identifies practices to decrease the impact of Canada’s waste management on the environment

In 2020, close to 10.9 million tonnes of residential waste was generated across Canada. This is the greatest amount of residential waste that has been documented and there was an increase of 13,880 tonnes since 2018 (Statistics Canada, 2023). This also reflected the growing role of residential waste as it took up 42% of the total waste in the country in 2020, as compared to 35% in 2002 (ibid.). Overall, residential waste increased a whooping 2.4 million tonnes from 2002 to 2020. Notably, while there has generally been a trend of  increasing residential waste, Canadian’s residential waste did decrease by 387,817 tonnes from 2006 to 2008. 

The opposite trajectory is found for non-residential sources as there has been a decline of 389,004 tonnes between 2002 and 2020. However, in 2020, 15.2 million tonnes of non-resident waste was generated in Canada, reflecting an increase of 360,820 tonnes from 2018 (Statistics Canada, 2023).

From 2002 to 2020, solid waste generated in Canada increased to 36.0 million tones, reflecting an increase by 5.3 million tones (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2023). During this time period, 9.9 million tonnes of waste was diverted, reflecting an increase of 3.3 million tonnes. This fraction reflected merely 27.5% of the solid waste in 2020 because there was still a large amount of solid waste that was disposed in landfills (or incinerated), namely 26.1 million tones (72.5% of the total solid waste), reflecting an increase of 2.0 million tones (ibid.). 

Notably, the majority of waste diversion occurred from residential as opposed to non-residential sources (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2023). Specifically, 52% of the diverted solid waste was residential in 2020, reflecting an increase of 2.4 million tonnes (or 85%) since 2002. While this is a positive trend, the amount of disposed residential waste (sent to landfills) also increased, namely by 2.4 million tonnes (or 29%) during this period (ibid.).