Annex: Reducing waste

The waste sector, which includes waste from homes, businesses, institutions and industry, accounts for about 3% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Landfills are a significant source of methane emissions, and are responsible for nearly 70% of the sector’s GHG emissions. The approach to controlling methane emissions from landfills across Canada is uneven, with some provinces having landfill methane capture regulations that vary in stringency. There is an opportunity to do significantly more to capture methane emissions from landfills across Canada. Leading municipalities and private sector firms are recovering resources and energy from waste. Preventing and reducing the generation of waste, and recycling materials like plastics, reduces GHG emissions by conserving raw materials and reducing energy consumption. Diverting food waste and other biodegradable materials reduces landfill methane emissions, and generates renewable resources like compost, fertilizer, and clean renewable biogas. New actions by the federal government will focus on increasing waste prevention, reduction and diversion, and recovering resources and clean energy from waste and wastewater.

Key measures to date

• Identified food waste reduction as a priority action area, through The Food Policy for Canada.
• Investing $20 million to support innovative ways to prevent or divert food waste through the Food Waste Reduction Challenge.
• Adopted, with provincial and territorial governments, aspirational goals to decrease Canada’s waste by 30% by 2030, and by 50% by 2040, and set a goal of zero plastic waste by 2030.
• Invested nearly $19 million in Plastics Innovation Challenges to support solutions to plastic waste.
• Developing regulations that will ban or restrict certain harmful single-use plastics, and require recycled content in plastic products and packaging.
• Investing in research through Canada’s Plastics Science Agenda, innovation through the Canadian Plastics Innovation Challenges, and community action through the Zero Plastic Waste Initiative.

Key facts

• Over half (58%) of all food in Canada is lost or wasted every year (35.5 million tonnes).
• In 2018, Canadians disposed of over 25.7 million tonnes of municipal solid waste, or nearly 700 kg per person.
• Over 60% of the municipal solid waste disposed of in Canada is made up of biodegradable materials that produce methane once landfilled.
• Around 100 of Canada’s 3,000+ landfills have infrastructure in place to reduce methane emissions.

A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy contains new measures for the waste sector

• Developing new federal regulations to increase the number of landfills that collect and treat their methane, and ensure that landfills already operating these systems make improvements to collect all they can.
• Exploring opportunities to support waste and biosolids management infrastructure, such as composting, anaerobic digestion and landfill methane collection and use.