Recycle Your Plastic Shopping Bags & Styrofoam in Toronto

December 9th, 2008 | posted by helen

As of December 9th, Toronto's Blue Bin program will start accepting plastic shopping bags and foam polystyrene packaging.

Vince Sferrazza, Director of Policy and Planning, Solid Waste Management Services says

We encourage people to reuse grocery and retail plastic bags in other ways, but if they have too many, they can now put them in their Blue Bins for recycling

There are a few guidelines for the new recycling rules:

Receipts must be removed from the bags
All bags must be placed in one bag with the handles tied together
Bags with drawstrings, metal or hard plastic handles are not accepted

The following bags will not be accepted in the Blue Bin:

Milk bags (both outer and inner bags)
Produce bags
Bread bags
Sandwich bags
Plastic food wrap
Biodegradable or compostable plastic bags

In addition the following foam polystyrene will now be accepted

Foam protective packaging (but not "peanuts")
Foam meat trays
Foam takeout food containers
Foam plates
Foam egg cartons
Foam coffee cups

You can find out more information about Toronto's recycling program on Toronto Garbage and Recycling.

You can also read the full press release here.

Image by El Negro Magnifico

On 13:55pm, December 19th, 2008 New said:

styrofoam (peanuts)

The small peanut type of packaging. How do I dispose of it? Do I put it in the garbage or wait for environment days or take it to a special area? epeers@sympatico.ca

On 11:11am, December 23rd, 2008 New said:

Grumble, they didn't take my blue bin

Watch out folks, maybe nobody briefed the actual folks with the trucks. I just had my blue bin left untouched, so I chased the guy a block and asked him and he said no, there were styrofoam packaging chunks at the top and he said "that's garbage, not recyclable". So maybe their definition of "foam protective packaging" is rather narrow. I'm seriously irritated by this, since the bin was pretty well full of other "normal" recyclables, so now I won't be able to put anything in the blue bin in 2 weeks. How will I ever catch up again?

On 14:15pm, December 23rd, 2008 helen said:

Thanks for the questions!

We have asked the City of Toronto to respond to these two questions, and we will post the answer when we get a response - so come back in a few days to see what they said.

On 16:14pm, December 23rd, 2008 helen said:

Response from the City of Toronto

The City of Toronto has responded very quickly to these two questions. Here are the answers:

Packing Peanuts:

Packing peanuts will be accepted at the Bermondsey, Commissioners and Ingram Transfer Stations.

Blue Bin Left Behind:
According to the city, if the Blue Bin is not accepted, you can contact Solid Waste Management at 416-338-2010. You can also email swastecs +at+ toronto +dot+ ca and a superviser will investigate, and possibly have the bin picked up if it should have been collected.

The city notes that it's possible that the collector has forgotten that polystyrene is now supposed to be picked up.

So hopefully you can get your Blue Box picked up over the holidays! :)

On 8:52am, January 6th, 2009 New said: