With old tires piling up, this community could pause new drop-offs at waste facilities

Wellington County may have to change how they handle used tires due to a provincial decision. CTV’s Colton Wiens reports.

The County of Wellington says its waste facilities may stop accepting old tires as they are running out of places to put them.

Councillors will vote on the temporary measure at their meeting on June 25.

According to a report from staff, the county started loading excess tires into 40-yard roll-off bins, but even those are filling up fast.

The waste facility only accepts a maximum of 10 tires a day from individual residents, but none from businesses. However, there are stories, likely apocryphal, of residents being paid by mechanics and retailers to drop off tires on their behalf.

Ever since the Hagersville tire fire in 1990, retailers and other automotive businesses are required to recycle their old tires. According to the county, when the province changed its tire recycling targets from 85 per cent to 65 per cent on Jan. 1, 2025, registered haulers slowed and then stopped picking them up.

The provincial government is considering changes that would, among other things, require “Producer Responsibility Organizations” to pick up tires from any site with more than 50 of them within a specified timeframe.

County staff feel that, until the rules officially change, pausing drop-offs at waste facilities could be the best solution.

“Whole recycling program has collapsed”

Jim Voigt, vice-president of the Columbia Auto Group in Waterloo, was not surprised to hear landfills were filling up. He said, since the targets changed last year, no one wants to collect tires from auto repair shops.

“Right now, they’re just piling up. We’re running out of places to put them. Almost every shop owner I speak to in Ontario is in the same position,” he told CTV News. The whole system has shut down. We used to pile up 200 used tires and call the recycler, and they’d come by and pick them up and take them away. And everybody was happy. But over the last number of months, the tire recyclers have no ability to pick them up. People won’t take them. But the Ford government has slashed the whole program to the point where they don’t have a place to put them.”

Voigt has been phoning for tire pick-ups for months, but no one has stopped by. He said they even resorted to piling the tires around the outside of the shop. Now that space is also running out.

“We have a large area to store tires, which is now completely full. But smaller shops, where you only have a half acre of land that your business is on, you have no place to put them,” Voigt said. “I can understand why the landfills are getting overrun with tires, because the whole recycling program has collapsed.”

He is still waiting for a response from government leaders.

“I’ve tried to reach out to MPs and other associations just to find out how are we going to solve this problem. Because right now, nobody is really talking about it very much. The opposition has brought it up, but it’s kind of been passed on,” Voigt said, adding, “We’re going to have a huge problem with unrecycled tires ending up somewhere where they’re not supposed to be.”

He also pointed out that Columbia Auto Group pays a $5 fee towards the recycling program every time they buy a tire, but they don’t get anything out of it.

“Everyone’s still paying the fee, but nothing’s being recycled anymore,” Voigt said. “I don’t think the consumer is going to be too happy paying a $5 fee to recycle their tire and then be given their tires back and say, ‘Recycle it yourself.’ That’s not the way the system is supposed to work.”