Irene Vandertop pulls out three clear plastic bags of garbage from the back of her car. The garbage, all 3,000 pieces of it, was collected by volunteers from an area outside just one Tim Hortons store in Toronto over several hours.
“This is quite disgusting,” Vandertop says before she pulls out the third bag. “This is only cups and lids from one store.”
Vandertop, a co-founder of Don’t Mess with the Don, says the restaurant chain Tim Hortons has a big problem when it comes to litter. The registered charity, run by volunteers, cleans up trash from ravines in the Don Valley and says it has picked up about 136,078 kilograms of garbage in the past six years.
The number one brand it finds in its garbage cleanups is Tim Hortons, Vandertop said.
“Imagine — Tim Hortons has more than 4,000 stores across Canada now and that would be millions and millions of cups and lids all strewn out throughout our parks, streets, wild spaces. And this is only cups and lids. There’s also food wrappers, containers and other beverage containers,” she said.
“I think Tim Hortons, as a flagship Canadian company, has a tremendous opportunity here to do something good for the world and for the environment that we live in. This is not in line with the times.”
A community group in the city’s east end is trying to get Tim Hortons to put a lid on local littering. Volunteers with Don’t Mess With the Don say the majority of the trash they pick up near the river are Tim Hortons cups and lids. As CBC’s Vanessa Balintec explains, it’s a local movement that goes back to 2018.
The charity launched its campaign, Tim Let’s Talk, last month, because Vandertop says the organization would like the restaurant chain to take more responsibility for its litter including carrying out clean-ups, encouraging customers to bring reusable cups and educating staff and customers about preventing litter. The trash pollutes green spaces, which means wildlife have to “live amidst our garbage,” she said.
Vandertop says Don’t Mess with the Don wrote a letter to Tim Hortons executives and hand-delivered it to company headquarters in May 2023 and again June 2023. It also made phone calls, but received no response. On June 21 this year, the group published the letter online, and launched its campaign three days later.
On Tuesday, Tim Hortons’s director of sustainability and packaging reached out to the group.
Company charting ‘more sustainable path forward’
In a statement this week, the company said it is committed to helping communities through “more sustainable packaging and recycling practices” and through its sustainability platform Tims for Good, which launched in 2021.
“Tim Hortons has a dedicated sustainability team that has spent the last several years charting a more sustainable path forward for our restaurants, along with our guests,” Michael Oliveira, communications director for Tim Hortons, said in the statement. Oliveira added that the company invested in a national TV campaign “to highlight our sustainability goals with guests.”
Through Tims for Good, the company has pledged to change more than three billion units of packaging to make them reusable, recyclable, or compostable. The company also claims it eliminated the use of more than one billion single-use plastics, including plastic straws and plastic stir sticks, by 2021.
On its website, the company says it is working to improve its packaging by: “transitioning from single-use to reusable; reducing the amount of material used; and ensuring our products can be diverted from landfills through recycling or composting.”
According to the company, there are plans for its cups to be collected for recycling across Ontario by 2026. It says it is “encouraged” that, through Ontario’s new extended producer responsibility regulations, an expected 17,000 new public collection bins will be installed across the province to enable people to dispose of waste properly.
He also said Tim Hortons had a “productive conversation” with Don’t Mess with the Don representatives on Tuesday and made plans to talk again soon to discuss the company’s progress.
Group to audit cups, lids at next clean-up
A new pilot project that launched July 3 in Toronto means residents can recycle hot and cold paper-based and plastic-lined beverage cups by placing them in blue bins, but Vandertop said the cups are still clearly ending up outside.
That’s why this Sunday, Don’t Mess with the Don is organizing a cleanup around two Tim Hortons locations. It plans to remove garbage within a 600-metre radius of each location and will do an audit of all cups and lids it finds.
Karen Wirsig, senior program manager for plastics at Environmental Defence, an environmental advocacy organization, said it’s important to hold corporations accountable for the waste they produce. Wirsig said Tim Hortons is a major generator of single-use plastic waste when it comes to its takeout packaging.
“We can’t necessarily choose how things are packaged when they’re sold to us. That is up to the companies to take responsibility for that,” Wirsig said.
“And that’s why it’s great that local groups, who see the impact of this because they pick it up, are putting pressure on these companies to take that responsibility.”
Ultimately, Wirsig said more government regulations are needed to make sure companies do the right thing.
Time to ‘step up,’ councillor says
Coun. Paula Fletcher, who represents Ward 14, Toronto-Danforth, agreed, saying she supports Don’t Mess with the Don and its latest campaign.
“I just think that the producers who rely on single-use plastics and unrecyclable cups for their products, really, the onus is on them now. Step up, make sure that we have a beautiful city.”
Vandertop said the conversation with Tim Hortons was promising but more needs to be done, saying the company needs to create a culture to prevent customers from littering.
“I’m a Tim Hortons customer… and I have not come across any incentives to not litter. And I visit so many Tim Hortons throughout Ontario. To me, they’re doing not enough, definitely not enough.”
As for customers, Vandertop said people who toss their coffee cups out of their vehicles should realize that the litter ends up in the ravines and waterways and can stay there for years.
“This is what you leave for your children. Clean up now, leave a better future.”