Recycling Issues

[YKF]

If one imposes mandatory recycling laws locally, I suspect that commercial businesses would choose not to do business in your locality.   Look at the high cost of electricity and labour locally and see what is happening to the auto manufacturing business.   Soon, Canada will be like Australia and not have any cars manufactured here.   Unless you are a California (high purchasing power/population), mandating extra costs (or even capturing externalities) will result in an exodus of business.

I don't think that the Region is considering mandatory recycling laws, so that shouldn't be a problem. I also don't think that if such laws were implemented, it would be a make or break issue for commercial business. When I was in university, the restaurant I worked in contracted out organics collection, largely so that they could play the environmentally-friendly card amongst competitors (at a cost to the business).

Also, while the rising cost of electricity has increased, it is not a particularly large expense for most companies. Labour costs/union pressures are by far the largest expenses, which is why we've been seeing the migration of manufacturing to Mexico, China and even southern states like Tennessee and South Carolina (source: Industry Canada report from a few years ago). I would hope that wages would increase in those jurisdictions rather than have us compete in the "race to the bottom."  

We're getting off topic here.