Issue Position: Canadian Trash

Issue Position

In 2003, the City of Toronto closed its landfill and started shipping all its trash to Michigan, and many other Ontario municipalities soon followed suit. Michigan citizens were outraged that our great State had become Canada's dumping ground. This trash poses serious health, safety, and security threats to Michigan families and communities.

In August of 2006, Senators Stabenow and Levin entered into a groundbreaking agreement with Ontario officials to phase out and stop, by the end of 2010, the dumping of 1.5 million tons of Ontario's municipally-managed trash in Michigan.

This agreement was a success. Ontario officials report that as of December 31, 2010, Toronto and three other Ontario municipalities ceased shipping their waste to Michigan. This equates to over 40,000 truckloads of trash that would have been dumped in Michigan each year without this agreement.

The City of Toronto reported that it "has honoured its annual tonnage reduction commitment and on December 31, 2010 will cease shipping municipal solid waste to the Republic Landfill in Michigan." York Region reported that it "has not had garbage shipments to Michigan landfills since August 2008." Effective December 31, 2010, the Regional Municipality of Durham reported that it "will no longer utilise Pine Tree Acres landfill located in the State of Michigan for the disposal of Municipal Solid Waste" The Peel Region of Ontario reported that it had "stopped shipping its municipal solid waste to Michigan at the end of 2008."

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