Ontario’s online annual reporting data includes most of the information submitted by regulated facilities, including: company name, address, sector and National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) identification number, and the amounts of toxic substances used, created, contained in product, and released, disposed and recycled at the facility.

The toxic substances reported under the Toxics Reduction Act are the same as the substances reported under NPRI, with the addition of acetone. Although NPRI contains 347 substances and substance groupings, facilities in Ontario that report to the Toxics Reduction program reported on 240 of these substances in 2015.

Facilities’ plan summaries, which are a snapshot of a facility’s toxic substance reduction plans, are also posted online. The plan summaries include any option(s) that the facility intends to implement, or is currently implementing, to reduce toxics use, creation or releases. It also includes estimated reductions of the substances. If a facility is not implementing an option to reduce at this time, the plan summaries will include the reasons for not implementing.

The information and analysis provided in this report originate from data received from facilities’ 2012-2015 annual reports and their 2011-2014 plan summaries (all data submitted as of September 14, 2016).

The majority of facilities reporting are categorized as small or medium-sized (500 employees or less).  1,037 facilities submitted reports in 2015, and 71% of these facilities reported between 1 and 5 substances. Refer to the graph below on ‘Number of Facilities by Number of Substances Reported in 2015’.

Number of facilities by number of substances reported in 2015

This graph illustrates the number of substances reported to the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change by facilities that report under the Toxics Reduction Act, for 2015. The graph shows that in 2015, approximately 425 facilities reported between 1 and 2 substances, approximately 300 facilities reported between 3 and 5 substances, approximately 160 facilities reported between 6 and 10 substances, approximately 50 facilities reported between 11 and 15 substances, approximately 20 facilities reported between 16 and 20 substances, approximately 50 facilities reported between 21 and 40 substances and, approximately 15 facilities reported over 40 substances.