Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
The City of Toronto Solid Waste Management Services Division is a public service that handles
the disposal of refuse for residential and commercial properties. The goal of the City is to reduce
the amount of waste that is landfilled each year without dramatically increasing the system’s
costs.
Waste management is a major issue for all urban centres but it has been particularly in focus in
Toronto since Michigan decided to stop accepting the city’s garbage. The city faces the problems
related to the volume of waste and limited landfill capacity, the environmental and monetary
costs of waste, illegal dumping, and a general sense of entitlement that permeates society and
justifies the production of waste.
Reframing Techniques
Stakeholder Perspectives
The first step in developing an achievable solution to the problems currently facing Toronto is to
recognize the various stakeholder perspectives and interests. The stakeholders affected by waste
management policy include:
• Industry/Retailer – Industry and retailers have an interest in minimizing the costs of production.
They perceive the problem as something that should have a long-term market solution.
• The Environment – Nature is a right belonging to future generations, not only current ones,
therefore, the interest of nature is to be preserved to the fullest extent possible.
• Tax Payer – Taxpayers have an interest in seeing their money spent effectively to improve the
city and in minimizing their contribution. Their perspective is that the city is rarely efficient.
• High Awareness Citizens – Toronto has an increasing number of people who are concerned
about the environment. These people believe that the city can continue to improve and should
do more.
• Low Awareness Citizens – Toronto also has many citizens who are unaware or apathetic
towards the harmful environmental effects of unconstrained dumping. They either do not
perceive the problem or do not want to act to improve it.
• The Chippewa of Thames Nation – They recently contracted with the City to build a new
landfill to go into operation in 2011. Their goal is to benefit economically from the City’s waste
while preserving the environmental integrity of their community.
• City of Toronto – The City wants to be responsive to its citizens but also demonstrate positive
leadership. The City is interested in improving their environmental policies without increasing
waste management expenditures.
Challenging Assumptions
Six assumptions about waste have been identified:
1. Waste = garbage (i.e. there is only one way to dispose of waste)
2. Waste is bad for the environment
3. The City will take care of it
4. Individual acts do not matter
5. The consumer is responsible for disposing of product packaging
6. High consumption levels necessitate lots of garbage
Benchmarking
In Sweden, more than 90% of household waste is recycled, reused, or recovered. By contrast,
Toronto sends 50% of its waste to landfills. Sweden has made industry responsible for
recovering their product packaging, a move which greatly increased the incentive for firms to
reduce packaging. Sweden has also made it illegal to landfill organic waste. In 2004, these
measures led to recycling rates of 96% for glass packaging, 95% for metal, and 86% for
cardboard. Most of the waste that cannot be recycled is incinerated at high efficiency plants. The
power generated is sold to the electricity authority at market rates. The most modern plant cost
$286 million to build, incinerates 460,000 tonnes of garbage a year, and generates revenue of
$36 to $70 million annually. The plant not only pays for itself, but will also begin generating a
profit within six years. By contrast, Toronto has spent $230 million on its most recent landfill.
Recommendations
1) Create a voluntary certification system for companies that are properly managing their waste.
This system would be loosely based on Toronto’s DineSafe rating system for restaurants.
Companies that meet certification requirements would be able to display this fact at their
storefront or behind their counter. This will inform consumers about the practices of their
merchants and complement the City’s current awareness campaign. It will also create a
commercial incentive for companies to join the program as consumers will gradually come to
associate the lack of certification with a lack of environmental concern.
2) The City has made good improvements to their practices by adopting Blue bins, Green bins,
and Yellow bags, but there is still a long way to go to get to a sustainable solution to the problem
of waste. A longer term solution begins with the City making investments into technology that
can recycle materials into reusable and profit-making products. This is attainable if the type of
waste product used in consumer packaging is standardized. An example of this would be to
standardize the material used in coffee cups. The city can use its special taxation powers to
penalize firms that do not phase in the chosen materials. The way to better engage consumers in
the process is to expand the deposit system currently used for some bottles and cans, into a wider
range of products. This will ensure that consumers recycle more waste. If the city can rely on a
standard material for coffee cups, and consumers are recycling them in order to receive their
refund, then a system can be implemented that converts the cups en masse into a reusable waste
product.
Conclusion
Through the application of these recommendations, the City can make a significant economic
gain through diminished use of landfills and increased use of reprocessing. The result will also
be a major improvement to environmental harms as less waste will be dumped into nature.
Lastly, Toronto will undoubtedly experience major social benefits from living in a cleaner, more
environmentally progressive city that has taken active steps to minimize its footprint.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 4
The Organization – The City of Toronto Waste Management Services Division 4
Benchmarking – The Swedish Example 5
Shareholders’ Perspectives (“The Pig”) 6
Challenging Assumptions and Changing Metaphors 7
Our Fifteen Percent Solutions 7
The Green Toronto Rating – Short Term Solution 8
Sticks and Carrots – Long Term Solution 9
Examining the Impacts of our Recommendations – The Triple Bottom Line 11
Appendix A – Reframing Techniques in Depth 12
Appendix B – Reflections 16
Appendix C – Green Toronto Rating Graphic 18
Bibliography 19
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Introduction
In September 2006, American officials announced that, effective in 2010, Michigan’s Carlton
Farms Landfill will no longer accept any of Toronto’s garbage (Greenberg, 2006). The
approximately 150 trucks that deliver Toronto’s waste to Michigan every single day would have
to find a new destination in three years’ time. The 700,000 tons of garbage Toronto used to send
to Michigan every year would have to be disposed of somewhere else (City of Toronto, 2007).
The tremors of a powerful corporate earthquake reverberated all the way to Toronto’s City Hall.
On the heels of Michigan’s announcement, The City of Toronto decided to purchase the
Green Lane landfill near London Ontario and commenced landfilling the city’s waste there in
April, 2007 (City of Toronto, 2007). What would this “new normal” mean for Torontonians? Is
this a sustainable long-term solution? Our group’s interest was piqued by these questions and so
we decided to investigate them more closely and analyze them through the critical lenses offered
by the NewMindsets system. Below, we describe the current state of waste management in
Toronto and its distinct challenges. After applying reframing techniques to the situation, we
arrived at clear, actionable solutions which have the potential to positively influence Toronto’s
waste management. Our recommendations aim to have a triple bottom line effect on economic,
The Organization – The City of Toronto Solid Waste Management Services Division
The disposal of refuse for residential and commercial properties in Toronto is overseen by the
City of Toronto Solid Waste Management Services Division (“The City”). This is a public
The City’s challenges are manifold. Toronto produces an enormous volume of waste is
produced, while landfill capacity is inherently limited. In addition, the environmental and
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monetary costs of waste are staggering and are compounded by illegal dumping and by a general
sense of entitlement that permeates society and rationalizes the unfettered production of waste.
Toronto produces a lot of garbage. Almost 1.2 million tons every year to be exact (City of
Toronto, 2007). Sixty percent of this substantial quantity was sent to landfills in 2006, a fact
which calls into question the long term sustainability of any landfilling operation. No landfill can
be truly sustainable if 700,000 tons of waste are being dumped in it annually. Alternatives to
landfilling are clearly necessary and the City’s recycling programs are a good example of such
initiatives. The Blue/Grey Box programs have been in place for several years and help recycle
metal, glass, plastics and paper. More recently, the Green Bin program has been implemented for
organic waste. This initiative has been very successful, boasting a participation rate of 90% (City
of Toronto, 2007). Overall, the city’s efforts to divert garbage away from landfills have been
relatively successful: Toronto’s 2006 residential diversion rate was 42%, up from 30% in 2003
(Weeks, 2004). These statistics suggest that Toronto is indeed doing better. But is there room for
To answer this question, we turned our attention to Sweden, a global leader in garbage
management. In Sweden, more than 90% of household waste is recycled, reused, or recovered
(Woolliams, 2006). Considering that Toronto sends 58% of its waste to landfills, there is no
doubt that there is still room for improvement. Sweden has made industry responsible for
recovering their product packaging, a move which greatly increased the incentive for firms to
reduce packaging. Sweden has also made it illegal to landfill organic waste. In 2004, these
measures led to recycling rates of 96% for glass packaging, 95% for metal, and 86% for
cardboard (Woolliams, 2006). Most of the waste that cannot be recycled is incinerated in high
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efficiency plants. The power generated is then sold to the electricity authority at market rates. A
modern plant costs $286 million to build, incinerates 460,000 tonnes of garbage a year, and
generates revenue of $36 to $70 million annually (Woolliams, 2006). The plant not only pays for
itself, but will also begin generating a profit within six years. By contrast, Toronto’s principal
waste management strategy was to spend $220 million on acquiring the Green Lane landfill (City
of Toronto, 2007).
The Swedish example convinced us that there is indeed room for improvement and
Toronto’s waste management can “stretch” further still. While in this case benchmarking did not
lead directly to a 15% solution, the technique did give us the confidence that alternatives to
landfilling exist and that a multifaceted approach to waste management is ideal. In light of this,
we proceeded to study Toronto’s challenges more closely. In order to arrive at better informed,
more feasible solutions, we undertook a careful review of the various stakeholders involved in
Our investigation revealed a large number of stakeholders, each with valid concerns and
Torontonians, High Awareness Torontonians, the Chippewa of Thames Nation, Industry and
Retailers, and the Environment as a separate entity. (See Appendix A for in-depth analysis.)
management challenge. How might these often opposed stances be reconciled? For example,
how might the City enlist the cooperation of both high awareness citizens and industry/retailers
at the same time? Addressing the non-complementary concerns of these parties in any sort of
meaningful way was a difficult leadership challenge for our group. However, the difficultly only
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appeared insurmountable because underlying it were a number of unchallenged assumptions and
unproductive metaphors. Are these various stakeholder perspectives above mutually exclusive?
In the course of our group discussions we identified six assumptions that constrained our
conception of garbage and limited the range of available garbage management solutions. (See
Appendix A for in-depth analysis.) Looking back over these assumptions and the stakeholders’
irreconcilable concerns. Also, the manner in which we conceptualized garbage leads to more
conflict and a shirking away from waste disposal responsibilities. Overall, we got the sense that
where one party’s win is another loss. Instead of “garbage disposal is conflict”, we changed the
fundamental changes take place: stakeholders are on the same team working together to find
solutions that accommodate all parties involved. They no longer need to play a “zero sum game”
and can employ the full range of their abilities to resolve the issue.
with those derived from the benchmarking and stakeholder perspective exercises, we proceeded
Waste management in Toronto is very complex and politically charged. Recognizing this, we
devised two sets of recommendations. The first focuses on short-term solutions, which can be
quickly implemented to produce immediate results and the second focuses on longer-term
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of the current waste management system. The hope is that the success of the short-term solutions
will produce the requisite goodwill and cooperation for the more ambitious long term solutions.
In the short-term, we recommend that the City create a voluntary certification system for
companies that are properly managing their waste. This system would be loosely based on
Toronto’s DineSafe rating system for restaurants. Specifically, a company would voluntarily
measure their carbon footprint by enlisting the services of a third-party engineering consulting
firm. Based on the results of this testing, companies would be assigned a rating by the City. This
“Green Toronto Rating” should be easy to interpret (either a number of stars out of five or a mark
out of 100) and be provided to the companies on a standardized form. (See Appendix C for an
example). Companies would then be able to display this certificate at their storefront or behind
their counter. This will inform consumers about the practices of their vendors and complement
the City’s current awareness campaign. It will also create a commercial incentive for companies
to join the program as consumers will gradually come to associate the lack of certification with a
lack of environmental concern. In other words, companies will buy the right to display their
environmental achievements and give consumers a choice as to whom they would rather do
business with: a company that takes pride in its environmental practices or a company that
evades accountability.
This solution was informed by several reframing techniques and draws upon the insights
derived therefrom. For example, it establishes a clear link between individual environmentally
conscious acts and a better city. By choosing to do business with vendors that take their waste
disposal and other environmental responsibilities seriously, consumers will directly encourage
eco-friendly practices. People will no longer be able to claim that individual acts do not matter.
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We readily acknowledge that this solution is itself based on the assumption that
consumers will choose the ethically correct alternative. However, we strongly believe that our
faith in Torontonians is not misplaced. If the successful Green Bin program has taught us
anything it is that, given a clear, objective method of contributing to a greener city, our citizens
Another strength of the Green Toronto Rating is the voluntary nature of the companies’
cooperation. This aspect of the solution was suggested by the changing metaphor of waste
management as problem solving. The adversarial nature of a mandatory system complete with
enforcement and rigid standards would only have exacerbated the tension between stakeholders.
As part of our research, we contacted several City of Toronto employees responsible for fighting
illegal dumping. Our interview with the manager of the Municipal Licensing and Stadards
Divisions, Steven Byrd, revealed that enforcement is a highly ineffective and resource-intensive
process. For example, in one alleyway in Toronto’s China Town, garbage collection and
enforcement of bylaws must be made daily. Whenever any garbage accumulates, illegal dumping
immediately follows. This vicious cycle of strict standard enforcement evasion of the
standard is clearly not desirable. Our solution breaks this cycle by removing the adversarial
aspect of waste management and promoting voluntary openness. We are confident that this 15%
solution will be effective for the City of Toronto. It is easy to implement, requires a minimal
financial investment on the part of the City, and has the potential to have a major effect on the
way Torontonians do business. The Green Toronto Rating should be immediately implemented as
The City has made good improvements to their practices by adopting Blue bins, Green bins, and
1
Yellow bags, but there is still a long way to go to get to a sustainable solution to the problem of
waste. A longer-term solution begins with the City making investments into technology that can
recycle materials into reusable and profit-making products such as insulation from recycled
paper. This is attainable if the type of waste product used in consumer packaging is standardized.
An example of this would be to standardize the material used in coffee cups. The city can use its
special taxation powers to penalize firms that do not phase in the chosen materials by, for
example, increasing property taxes. This will ensure that uncooperative companies are strongly
The way to better engage consumers in the process is to expand the deposit system
currently used for some bottles and cans to a wider range of products. This will ensure that
consumers recycle more waste; specifically, the low awareness citizen will have a tangible
financial reason to recycle. If the city can rely on a standard material for coffee cups, and
consumers are recycling them in order to receive their refund, then a system can be implemented
incentives (“carrots”) and penalties (“sticks”) to achieve its goals and necessitates sizeable
each individual facet of the program may fall within the realm of the 15% solution, as a whole,
this Sticks and Carrots approach may face significant hurdles. Resistance will surely follow any
move by the City to increase commercial property taxes both from industry (who does not want
increased production and recycling costs) and from the consumers (who are afraid that the costs
of the program will be passed on to them by retailers). These are legitimate concerns and
reasonable critiques of our long-term solution. However, we feel that the complexity and
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magnitude of Toronto’s waste management situation requires both short and long-term solutions.
The short-term Green Toronto Rating is a strong 15% solution. The more ambitious long-term
Stick and Carrots approach requires an internalization of the new metaphor of waste
management as problem solving. As such, the success of the long term solution above is
contingent on the manner in which Toronto’s eco-psychology will develop in the next decade.
Through the application of the above recommendations, the City can make a significant
economic gain through diminished use of landfills and increased use of reprocessing. Not only
will its current investment in the Green Lane landfill be useful for a longer length of time, but the
City will also reap the financial benefits of selling products made from recycled materials.
Major environmental improvements will also follow as less waste will be dumped into
nature, avoiding air pollution and contamination of potable water sources. Achieving a 70%
diversion rate (from the current 42%) reduces greenhouse gases by 25% (equal to the removal of
100,000 vehicles); recycles 240,000 tons of paper annually (saving 4.5 million trees); and saves
900 million kWh of energy (enough to power 170,000 homes) (City of Toronto, 2007).
Lastly, Toronto will undoubtedly experience major social benefits from living in a
cleaner, more environmentally progressive city that has taken active steps to minimize its
ecological footprint. Interestingly, Toronto’s progressive environmental image may also attract
more tourism to our city, which will also result in financial benefits. This suggests that the
individual effects of the triple bottom line are not isolated categories. Rather, the economic,
environmental and social benefits can be cyclical and interrelated, with an improvement in one
aspect feeding into further improvements in another. This is precisely why the city of Toronto
must plan for the future. Sustainable solutions today, for a greener TOmorrow.
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Appendix A – Reframing Techniques in Depth
Stakeholder Perspectives
a) The City of Toronto wants to be responsive to its citizens but also demonstrate
without increasing waste management expenditures. Specifically, the goal of the City
is to reduce the amount of waste that is landfilled each year without dramatically
b) Taxpayers want their money spent effectively on programs that make Toronto a better
city to live in. Equally important, taxpayers strive to minimize their tax contribution.
Their perspective is that the city is rarely efficient and that taxes are already high
enough.
d) High awareness Torontonians are an increasing segment of the population. They are
concerned about the environment and believe that the city can do more and should
continue to improve.
e) The Chippewa of Thames Nation recently contracted to sell the Green Lane landfill to
the City. Their goal is to benefit economically from the City’s waste while preserving
f) Industry and retailers have an interest in minimizing the costs of production. They
perceive the problem as something that should have a long-term market solution.
1
nature is a right belonging to future generations, not only current ones. Therefore, the
Changing Metaphors
Waste does not necessarily have to be garbage and landfilling is certainly not the only way to
harmful landfilling. Also, there are initiatives elsewhere in the world that transform paper
waste into insulation. In the United Kingdom alone more than 1 million homes have been
successfully insulated with construction materials produced entirely from recycled newsprint
(Muren, 2005).
If waste is diverted away from landfills and disposed of in environmentally conscious ways,
1
there is no reason why this has to be the case.
This assumption is at the root of the general sense of entitlement Torontonians feel with
regards to waste disposal: “I pay my taxes, so I can produce as much waste as I want and the
City is responsible for making it disappear”. If our solutions are to be effective, they will
recycling, reducing and reusing when so many other people litter and dump illegally?”
Therefore, the solutions we will generate must make obvious the link between individual
Out of habit, we assume that product packaging will be disposed of by the consumer. This
currently benefits industry and retailers since they view their discarded used packaging only
as an added expense. A new piece of electronic equipment may come wrapped in numerous
manufacturer/retailer the moment the product has left the factory or store. This current state
of affairs does not incentivize industry and retailers to reduce the amount of packaging they
use or to use more environmentally friendly materials. Our solutions will strive to shift some
of the responsibility for waste disposal back onto industry and retailers by tackling their
Many people are concerned that addressing the waste disposal issue in more environmentally
1
friendly ways will necessarily constrain their lifestyle. Torontonians and Canadians in
general have come to enjoy a high standard of living which they will not easily renounce.
However, Sweden is also a modern, high consumption society and, as the benchmarking
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Appendix B – Reflections
Our learning experience with the project started as early as our first brainstorming session on
possible research topics. We quickly realized that we would have to strike a delicate balance
between picking an ambitious, overly broad topic and a narrow, trivial topic. The first would be
too distant with solutions too difficult to realistically implement while the second would not lead
to meaningful triple bottom line breakthroughs. Initially, our topic was to be Waste Management
in Toronto’s China Town. While a very interesting and potentially rewarding topic, we realized
that we were unnecessarily limiting ourselves: the ideas we were generating were equally
After we decided on a topic, we initially found it difficult to generate true 15% solutions.
We were tempted to do exactly what Professor Morgan advised against, namely working
backwards from existing waste management solutions and trying to justify them in terms of the
reframing techniques. The solutions, while innovative in their own right, felt disconnected from
the content of the course and “tacked on” to the rest of our project. This period marked the
lowest point in our team’s morale. We scheduled a weekend meeting and did the unthinkable: we
followed the instructions. By rigorously applying the reframing techniques we were able to better
understand the challenge and arrive at true 15% solutions. Overcoming this difficulty remains
one of the most satisfying aspects of this project for our group.
Following the research and idea generation phase, we started writing this report. Fitting
all our content within the 8 page limit was a challenge. Removing a paragraph that represents
hours of research and drafting was difficult to say the least. However, looking back, we would
agree that the page limit forced us to focus on the essential elements of what we were trying to
1
communicate. By removing superfluous information, our project gained clarity and unity of
vision.
Another challenge of the write-up was agreeing on a tone: would we be formal and
conversational, narrative-style which we felt was ideally suited to the challenge of telling a
compelling story.
As we drew closer to the end of the project, we realized that our group was working
together in a way that brought out each member’s individual strengths. Some people talked more,
others listened and took notes; some focused on statistics while others worked on graphics.
While it is expected that individual strengths would surface during healthy group work, the
interesting and unexpected thing about our group’s role distribution is that it was quite informal.
Roles were assumed in a natural, organic manner with people taking on responsibilities without
rigid distribution of work. Looking back, our group experience has been nothing short of
fantastic. It is our hope that each of our individual flowerpots will take root and turn and blossom
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Appendix C – Green Toronto Rating Graphic
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Bibliography
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http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=19d938fb-21e4-434b-a2a2-
71aeb4d1db6c&k=8165
Muren, Dominic. Warmcel Recycled Paper Insulation. Treehugger.com Design and Architecture
Materials. April 2005. Available online:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/warmcel_recycle.php
Weeks, Carly. Finding Homegrown Garbage Solutions. New Media Journalism - University of
Western Ontario Faculty of Information and Media Studies. Accessed November 2007.
Available Online:
http://www.fims.uwo.ca/newmedia/newmedia2004/garbage/garbage_weeks_d4_p.htm
Woolliams, Jessica. As Toronto battles to find a solution to its garbage crisis, Sweden offers a
solution. Sustainable Building Centre Website. September 2006 Available online:
http://www.sustainablebuildingcentre.com/forum-
topic/as_toronto_battles_to_find_a_solution_to_its_garbage_crisis_sweden_offers_a_sol
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