Squeezed in Scarborough: Small Biz Left High and Dry by Tire Recycling Failures
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Seid Sayed is facing city warnings over a mountain of scrap tires, but provincial rule changes have left him with no one to call for pickup.
OPINION: There is nothing more frustrating than being caught in the gears of government incompetence. Right now, Seid Sayed, the owner of Flame Auto Repair on Kingston Road in Scarborough, is living that frustration. He is staring at a stockpile of more than a thousand scrap tires—both inside his shop and out—and the city is threatening him with fines.
According to reporting from CBC Toronto, Sayed received an email from the city's municipal licensing and standards division giving him a deadline of Thursday to clear the tires. While Paul Di Salvo, the city's director of regulatory compliance and enforcement, told CBC Toronto that the city has only issued a warning so far and will consider a property owner's efforts to resolve bylaw issues, the pressure is real. Di Salvo noted that these stockpiles are environmental and safety risks, specifically citing pest breeding and fire hazards.
But here is the rub: Sayed can't actually get rid of the tires. He is trapped by a provincial system that has effectively stopped working for the little guy.
Since 2019, Ontario has required tire producers to handle recycling, often outsourcing this to Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs), which contract the haulers and recyclers. For Sayed, a PRO used to visit twice a month; the last pickup was roughly seven months ago. Despite calling a PRO three times and being told to wait, and emailing two Ontario MPPs without a response, Sayed is stranded. He cannot take the tires to a municipal dump due to city rules, and he is not running a landfill—he is running a small business.
Why is this happening? CBC Toronto reports that in January 2025, the Ontario government slashed collection targets. Producers are now only required to recycle 65 percent of used tires by weight, down from 85 percent. On top of that, the government reduced the number of required collection sites across the province.
Peter Tabuns, the provincial NDP critic for the Ministry of the Environment, told CBC Toronto that these changes have created tire surpluses that some PROs claim they have no economic incentive or obligation to process. Adam Moffatt, executive director of the Ontario Tire Dealers Association, warned CBC Toronto that tire dealers across the province are facing environmental concerns because they have no viable path to remove the rubber. Moffatt estimates there could be three to four million excess tires by the end of the year.
Ontario's Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Gary Wheeler told CBC Toronto that the ministry expects producers and PROs to manage end-of-life tires as they become available and that they are currently considering feedback from a recent 30-day consultation on regulation changes.
Meanwhile, the Resource Productivity & Recovery Authority (RPRA) maintains that producers must continue recycling from collection sites regardless of whether targets are met. But as Seid Sayed can attest, the regulations on paper don't mean much when the trucks stop showing up and the city warnings start arriving.