The Greater Toronto Area has until 2010 to find new dump sites for the hundreds of truckloads of trash shipped daily to Michigan.

Two U.S. senators have struck a deal with the Ontario government to phase out garbage shipments to Michigan over the next four years. There will be a 20 per cent cut by the end of 2007 and another 40 per cent reduction by 2008.

Garbage from the Toronto area will no longer be welcome in Michigan in four years.
(Associated Press)

The export of commercial and industrial waste will still be allowed. 

Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten, who helped broker the deal, said she is confident the four municipalities — Toronto, York, Peel and Durham — will be able to meet the targets.

"They will need to [find] some space for their residual waste but I am also encouraging them to seek out and increase diversion to it's full extent," she said.

It is estimated about 350 trucks carry garbage from Ontario to Michigan every day.

City to focus on recycling

The City of Toronto plans to beef up recycling efforts to meet garbage reduction targets set out in the agreement.

By 2010, the city wants households to divert 60 per cent of their waste.

The city's director of solid waste planning, Geoff Rathbone, said that goal can be achieved by introducing green bins to apartment buildings, as well as bigger blue boxes to make sure all bottles and cans are recycled.

The city also plans to crack down on a bylaw requiring people to use their bins.

According to city statistics, a single-family home recycles about 53 per cent of their garbage, but those in apartment buildings recycle only a fraction of that. Apartment buildings make up about half of Toronto's households.

The city will investigate treating the remaining 400,000 tonnes with new technologies, such as biological, chemical or incineration treatments.

Deal defuses threat of sudden ban

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate had legislation pending that would have allowed states like Michigan to ban the dumping of garbage in state landfills.

Broten had said there was a possibility a ban could have come into effect as early as January, but the deal announced Thursday defuses that threat.

According to Michigan government officials, Canadian trash made up nearly 20 per cent of all the waste dumped in state landfills last year.

U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin have been fighting against Ontario's shipments of waste to Michigan.

Stabenow said more than 175,000 Michigan citizens have signed her petition to have the trash shipments stopped.