Run Government Like a Business? Try Picking Up the Recycling
Ontario’s privatized recycling experiment is failing on service, accountability, and trust — exactly where government is supposed to work.
For years, we’ve heard the same refrain: government should be run like a business. Or, better yet, let business handle it entirely.
Well, Ontario’s shift to private, producer-run recycling is what that looks like in practice.
The pitch was better recycling outcomes. Lower costs and a shift to the private sector. What we’ve actually gotten is missed pickups, overflowing blue bins, confused residents, and a remarkable lack of accountability.
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On a personal note: in Toronto, my recycling hasn’t been picked up for two weeks in a row. I’m happy to give anyone first-day jitters. Even a rocky first week. But this is bonkers. The City managed to keep trucks running through snowstorms, but this provider doesn’t seem to be able to do it. This isn’t weather. It’s a system that wasn’t ready.
The customer service comparison says everything. People love to complain about City Hall, but at least the City has 311, a functional website, clear information, and someone you can actually reach. The private operator has a barebones website and an email address. No clarity. No responsiveness.
And the irony is that this was supposed to save money. But unreliable service doesn’t do that. When recycling isn’t picked up, people stop trusting the system. Blue bins end up in garbage bags, and taxpayers, not the private companies that produced the waste, pay the cost.
There’s also the quieter issue of control. Under this model, the City can’t step in directly. Councillors can’t fix it. 311 can’t fix it. When things go wrong, responsibility dissolves into a shrug. That’s not efficiency. That’s fragmentation.
This all brings to mind A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, which chronicles communities that stripped government down in the name of freedom and efficiency, only to discover that some unglamorous public systems exist for a reason. Sometimes that reason is keeping bears out of town. Sometimes it’s keeping recycling off the sidewalk.
None of this is an argument that the government is perfect. It isn’t. Public services should always be reviewed and improved. But “run it like a business” isn’t a plan, and privatization isn’t a substitute for competence.
Recycling is a public trust problem, not just a logistics contract. And right now, that trust is breaking down in real time.
