What to know
- Circular Materials took over Toronto’s recycling service on Jan. 1 under Ontario’s legislation.
- The rollout was marred by missed pickups across several neighbourhoods, with the city transferring more than 10,000 resident calls to the company in January alone.
- Councillors Josh Matlow and Dianne Saxe say the company has not clearly explained the service failures and argue residents struggled to reach customer support.
- Both councillors say they want stronger transparency measures, and would support the City of Toronto taking back the recycling service if fair and reasonable terms can be reached.
Following a series of issues with Toronto’s new recycling system, two city councillors are saying they believe the city should push for accountability and consider bringing back the blue bin system.
Not-for-profit company Circular Materials took over recycling pickup in the city starting Jan. 1, after the Ontario government introduced legislation ordering a province-wide transition to full Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a system that shifts responsibility for recycling into producers.
However, the transition started far from smoothly, as residents across the several neighbourhoods reported their recyclables were not picked up for weeks, with some also saying attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful and left them feeling frustrated.
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Although Ontario Premier Doug Ford has acknowledged and attributed the missed pickups to miscommunications between the new service provider and the City of Toronto throughout the transition, Circular Materials has yet to publicly reveal a reason for the delays.
During an Infrastructure and Environment Committee meeting on Wednesday, Circular Materials delivered a presentation with an overview of the transition, which covered:
- An update about the transition;
- A plan to manage waste from large online marketplaces;
- Addressing complaints about Blue Bin collection through the company’s phone line;
- The process for addressing complaints.
Councillors highlight issues with the service
Following the presentation, some councillors raised more concerns about the company’s service takeover, including the lack of clarification over what caused pickup issues and lack of residents’ access to support.
“The [provincial] government promised a smooth, seamless transition that residents wouldn’t even notice who had picked up the recycling the week before and who was picking it up now. And in fact, it was going to provide better service,” city councillor Josh Matlow, who represents Ward 12, Toronto–St. Paul’s, told Now Toronto on Thursday.
“The reality was, over New Year’s, that not only did the service not improve, it wasn’t done at all. There were many streets, including entire neighbourhoods in Toronto, that were missed for pickup.”
Ward 11, University-Rosedale councillor Dianne Saxe also said Circular Materials had originally promised it would run a special pickup in the first week of January, and correct any missed pickups within one day of the scheduled service. However, it did not deliver on any of these promises.
In addition, the councillor said the new program also failed to coordinate with snow removal services, and blamed it for not picking up bins.
“It was recycling pickup day when we had the heavy snow, and so people dutifully took their bins out and followed the instructions. So, the sidewalk ploughs couldn’t get by because the bins are on the sidewalk. So, the sidewalks didn’t get ploughed,” she said. “Then, Circular Materials used the fact that the ploughing hadn’t been done as [an] excuse for not picking up the bins.”
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Residents also seemed to find issues contacting the company about missed service.
In an email to Now Toronto, the city confirmed that it transferred 9,264 calls from residents to Circular Materials in January, in addition to 1,246 calls transferred by City Customer Service Representatives.
Nevertheless, Matlow says many residents could still not contact the company due to its limited phone line, which he says is closed overnight and during weekends.
“If they’re leaving a mess, then their job is to clean up their own mess, but that’s the difference between public service and privatizing public services…Private companies are always going to be looking for ways to cut corners and cut costs for their own interests, and that means fewer investments into the service that residents expect,” he suggested.
Circular Materials yet to reveal reason for delays
Matlow said he repeatedly tried to ask Circular Materials’ staff about what was behind the messy service transition during Wednesday’s presentation, but said they just avoided his questions.
“I asked over and over and over again. I called them out, I even said, ‘With all due respect, you’ve said a lot, but you’ve not answered my question.’ And it shouldn’t be too much to ask that when recycling pickup is not done for entire neighbourhoods for weeks in Toronto, that at the very least, that Circular Materials should provide a basic account for what happened,” he said.
Although the company is currently not legally required to share detailed information about its service, Saxe revealed she has pushed a motion for the city to require it to share a monthly report moving forward. To that, she said Circular Materials staff proposed sharing annual data about the service across the entire city.
“Well, that’s completely unhelpful. We don’t have the problem in Scarborough, where the streets are wide and the houses are far apart. The problem is downtown, and we need some specificity [on] where the problems are, how they’re being fixed,” she said.
Matlow also said he agrees that Circular Materials should provide more information about the service.
“At the very least, I want detailed data information to be transparent and accountable to the public about a service that they rely on,” he said.
Councillors say they support the city in taking back the service
In addition to getting more information about what went wrong during the transition, Matlow said he believes the city should take back the service.
“I’m also convinced that, given that the service was being provided in a predictable and reliable way by the city, it made no sense to remove it from from the City of Toronto, and it should be returned to a place where there can be real accountability and transparency about a service that that most people consider just like a basic part of what cities do,” he said.
When asked if she’d also support the city taking back the service, Saxe said she would “if it was on fair and reasonable terms.”
“The city provides a better service than Circular Materials does. Circular Materials’ focus is on cost cutting for the brand owners. The city’s focus is on good service for residents,” she said.
“The city offered, we said, ‘We do want to continue the service. We know that our residents expect us to do it. We want to do it. We have people to do it.’ And we offered our transfer sites as well. They set rules that they knew we couldn’t accept. So that’s why the city doesn’t have it.”
Circular Materials, City respond
In an email to Now Toronto, Circular Materials said the “short-term challenges” experienced during the takeover period have to do with the scale of the transition, and said it is committed to collaborate with communities and municipalities to ensure the service runs smoothly.
“Ontario represents the largest recycling transition in Canada. As of Jan. 1, 2026, Circular Materials’ network of collection partners, on behalf of producers, now provides recycling services to over 5 million households across the province,” a spokesperson wrote.
“Transitions of this scale often come with short-term challenges. Many Toronto neighbourhoods experienced a seamless recycling transition. However, some Toronto areas experienced collection challenges.”
Moreover, the company said it is working with its service provider to resolve operational issues and take immediate action over missed pickups, and has hired more staff to help attend calls and resolve backlogs.
The City of Toronto said it had been putting efforts to prepare for the transition “over the past several years.”
“The City has invested significant effort over the past several years to support an informed transition, even though the new recycling program is now fully managed by Circular Materials under provincial legislation,” a spokesperson said.
As the service is now fully operated by Circular Materials, the city said it will keep doing what it can to support residents, including transferring calls from 311 to the company’s phone line.
