Ontario’s tire shops are heading into their busiest changeover season with a problem already taking up space behind the service bays: used tires that have not moved through the recycling system quickly enough. Dealers and repair-shop operators say collection delays have left backlogs across the province, raising concern that the fall rush could add fresh piles before older ones are cleared.
The timing is especially awkward because Ontario only finalized major changes to its tire-recycling rules in September. The province raised the management requirement for 2026 and is expanding the required collection network in 2027, but industry representatives say the immediate test is whether pickup capacity improves now. With winter-tire demand building as temperatures fall, dealers are entering what one Toronto-area shop owner described as “crunch time.”
The Fall Rush Is Arriving Before the Backlog Is Gone
Ontario tire dealers have been warning for months that the recycling problem is not simply a future risk. CityNews reported on October 5 that old tires have been accumulating at repair shops and collection sites, with Ontario Tire Dealers Association executive director Adam Moffatt saying two large stockpiles had formed by the end of 2025—one in Stittsville and another outside Sudbury—along with hundreds of thousands of tires backlogged at collection sites. Separate trade reporting in late September described pickup service at some locations as sporadic and said some dealers had gone weeks without collection.
That changes the usual fall equation. A tire shop normally expects a surge of removals as customers replace worn all-seasons, buy winter tires or swap seasonal sets. This year, some businesses are beginning that surge without the empty space they would normally want. John Rouvas, owner of Optimum Auto in Toronto, told CityNews he wanted his lot cleared before the busiest period because last year’s pile became too large to manage comfortably. The concern is not that recycling has stopped everywhere, but that the system may enter peak demand already carrying unfinished work.
There Is No Official Province-Wide Backlog Count
The size of Ontario’s current backlog is difficult to state with precision. Modern Tire Dealer reported in late September that the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority, which regulates the system, did not have an official estimate for the number or tonnage of tires waiting at dealers, haulers and other collection sites. That absence matters because large visual stockpiles can make the problem feel obvious locally without providing a reliable province-wide total.
Industry estimates are much larger than the numbers visible at any one repair shop. The Ontario Tire Dealers Association estimated that roughly 1 million to 1.25 million scrap tires were backlogged at collection sites in late September, excluding two major stockpiles. It also estimated that Ontario ended 2025 with roughly two million scrap tires outside normal recycling flows. Those are industry figures rather than audited government counts, so they should be treated as estimates. Still, they help explain why dealers are focused on pickup frequency rather than only on new regulations. Even a stronger target does not make an existing pile disappear overnight; collection, hauling and processing capacity must physically move it through the system.
The 2025 Rule Changes Altered the Incentives
The present dispute traces back to regulatory changes that took effect on January 1, 2025. RPRA’s own guidance says Ontario eliminated minimum tire collection targets and replaced the previous structure with management requirements. For most tires, the new management requirement was set at 65% of a producer’s calculated average supply. The rules also introduced more flexibility in how collection networks could be configured, including changes to site requirements in large municipalities, geographic offsetting and the ability to substitute some permanent collection sites with public collection events.
Those changes were intended to reduce burden and simplify requirements for producers, but dealers argue they also weakened the pressure to collect every tire entering the waste stream. RPRA’s 2026 compliance bulletin confirms that the number of collection sites required in municipalities with populations above 500,000 was reduced under the 2025 amendments. By spring and summer 2026, repair shops and industry groups were publicly reporting missed or delayed pickups, service stoppages and growing inventories. The province has since acknowledged that collection disruptions require a regulatory response, which is why September’s amendments reversed part of the earlier direction.
Ontario Has Now Raised the Management Target to 80%
Ontario finalized a substantial correction on September 21. The amended Tires Regulation increases the management requirement from 65% to 80% for the 2026 performance year and every year after. The province says the higher target is intended to make producers and the organizations acting for them manage more used tires, helping reduce collection disruptions and existing backlogs. The change applies to 2026 even though it was finalized late in the year, creating immediate pressure to improve performance before December.
A second major change arrives on January 1, 2027. The required collection network is scheduled to grow from roughly 4,300 sites to roughly 6,500, an increase of about 2,200 locations. At least 220 of those additional sites must be in Northern Ontario. The government also tightened network-reporting rules and removed the $1-million cap on administrative penalties for relevant contraventions after the amendment was filed. Together, those changes give regulators stronger tools and increase the amount of material producers must manage. For tire dealers, however, the practical question remains whether those legal requirements translate into more trucks arriving before lots fill up this fall.
Some of the Strongest Proposed Pickup Rules Were Dropped
The final regulation is tougher than the system dealers were operating under earlier in 2026, but Ontario did not adopt every measure it initially proposed. During the spring consultation, the government considered expanding “call-in” collection so any site with at least 50 tires could request pickup and receive service within a guaranteed response time. It also considered requiring collected tires to be managed within three months after pickup. Both ideas were left out of the final package after consultation feedback raised concerns about complexity, prescription and the need for flexibility.
That omission is important during the fall changeover because a higher province-wide management target is not the same thing as a guaranteed pickup schedule for an individual garage. A shop can still care less about the annual percentage than about whether a trailer is removed before another week of tire appointments. The government’s final approach instead relies more heavily on the higher 80% target, a larger 2027 collection network, clearer rules for shared sites and stronger enforcement. Those measures may improve system-wide performance, but dealers will judge them through something simpler: how reliably used tires leave their property during the busiest weeks of the year.
The System Depends on More Than the Tire Shop
Ontario’s tire-recycling framework places responsibility upstream. Businesses that supply tires into the province are legally responsible for meeting recovery obligations, and many retain producer responsibility organizations, or PROs, to operate collection networks and manage those obligations on their behalf. Haulers then move used tires from collection sites to processors, retreaders or other approved destinations. A delay anywhere in that chain can show up at the most visible point—the repair shop—as a pile that keeps growing.
That is why dealer groups have focused so heavily on PRO implementation. Moffatt told CityNews that the industry was waiting to see how the organizations would respond to the September amendments and how quickly their strategies would change. RPRA itself tells tire haulers facing difficulty getting material processed to contact its compliance team, an acknowledgement that downstream capacity can also become a bottleneck. The regulator likewise advises collection-site operators who cannot gain access to a producer collection system to seek assistance. The new rules can raise obligations, but successful fall performance still depends on contracts, trucks, processing space and coordination across the entire chain.
Earlier Data Show Collection Was Already the Weak Point
Ontario’s published historical data provide useful context because they separate collecting tires from actually recovering material once it enters the system. For 2024, RPRA reported that 149,837.55 tonnes of all tires were collected against a collection requirement of 173,311 tonnes. That produced a collection rate of 73.49%, below the 85% requirement then in force. The province’s 2024 data therefore show that getting enough tires into the recovery stream was already a challenge before the January 2025 rule changes.
At the same time, the recovery side performed better. RPRA reported 135,027.78 tonnes of tires recovered in 2024 through reuse, retreading or processing, equal to a 90.11% recovery rate and above the applicable 85% recovery requirement. The distinction helps explain the present controversy. Ontario can have processors successfully recovering a high share of tires they receive while dealers still struggle if collection from generators is inconsistent. It also cautions against treating one percentage as a complete scorecard. The current 80% management target is structured differently from the old collection requirement, so comparisons across regulatory periods need care rather than assuming the percentages measure exactly the same thing.
Winter-Tire Season Creates a Predictable Surge
The concern about timing is not arbitrary. Fall is one of the busiest periods for Canadian tire retailers because large numbers of drivers change to winter tires within a relatively short window. Ontario’s winter-driving guidance says all-season tires can begin losing grip at 7 C and that winter tires improve traction and can shorten braking distances by as much as 25% in winter conditions. Ontario auto insurers are also required to offer a rate discount for private passenger vehicles equipped with winter tires, reinforcing the incentive for drivers to make the seasonal switch.
For recycling logistics, every tire sale or replacement can generate another used casing that needs somewhere to go. Not every seasonal change creates scrap—many customers store their usable summer or all-season set for spring—but worn tires are often replaced during the same appointment cycle. Trade reporting describes fall changeover as a period when shop workload can surge within weeks and says scrap-tire volumes rise sharply after the quieter late-summer period. That makes October and November a stress test: collection systems have less room to recover from missed pickups because new material can arrive faster than during ordinary months.
Large Tire Piles Are More Than an Eyesore
The concern over stockpiles is partly operational and partly environmental. A shop with limited parking or storage can quickly lose usable space when hundreds of tires remain on site. Earlier CityNews reporting from Scarborough described repair businesses using customer parking areas for old tires after months without pickups. That problem becomes harder once winter weather arrives, when snow can cover piles and complicate removal.
There are also well-established hazards associated with storing large quantities of tires. Ontario has long warned that stockpiled tires can create fire risks and collect standing water that provides mosquito breeding habitat. The provincial Fire Code contains specific controls for outdoor tire-storage yards once stored tire or shredded-tire volume exceeds 300 cubic metres, including prohibitions on open-air burning and smoking in the storage area. Those thresholds do not mean every pile behind a garage is automatically a regulated storage yard or an immediate emergency. They do show why industry groups frame prolonged accumulation as more than a housekeeping problem. A recycling delay can eventually become a space, safety, environmental and compliance issue.
The Next Few Months Will Show Whether the Reset Works
Ontario’s new rules have changed the direction of policy, but their effectiveness will be measured in routine pickups rather than regulatory language. Dealers will be watching whether existing backlogs shrink while fresh fall scrap tires continue to enter the system, whether PROs expand service quickly enough to meet the higher 2026 management requirement, and whether haulers and processors have enough capacity to keep material moving. The larger 6,500-site network does not formally arrive until 2027, so this fall is effectively a transition period under tighter targets but before the full collection expansion.
Consumers still have a role at the edge of that system. Ontario’s official Where to Recycle map lists public locations where used tires can be dropped off free for recycling, reuse or refurbishment, and the map moved to the Ontario Recycles website in October 2026. For shops already carrying excess inventory, however, public drop-off information does not solve the commercial backlog. The decisive test is whether the producer-responsibility system can move tires out as quickly as the fall season generates them. By year-end, dealers should have a much clearer answer.
