Ontario is in the process of shifting the cost burden of trash away from municipalities and onto companies that make and sell products that generate waste.

With this shift — called “extended producer responsibility” — industry now bears the full costs of recycling or recovering such items as tires, batteries, light bulbs and electronics.

Under the system, companies pay fees, based on the amount of waste material they create, to businesses that manage recycling programs, known as producer responsibility organizations (PROs).

It’s up to the companies to choose whether to pass those fees on to consumers or to absorb them as a cost of doing business. The theory is that the fees provide the companies with an incentive to reduce their packaging and other waste.

For material that fills up blue boxes — including beverage containers, paper, plastic, glass and metal — the transition to industry paying the full costs only began last year and is to be completed by 2026.

Right now, companies are seeing their blue box fees shoot upward exponentially.

The government is facing corporate pressure to change Ontario’s plan that sees industry taking on the full cost of blue box recycling programs.

The industry is “trying to shirk its environmental responsibilities,”

“If producers are not paying for this packaging, it’s going to be taxpayers, it’s going to be the environment or it’s going to be human health, and that would be a massive step backwards,” Wallis said in an interview.