Garbage and Recycling at a Plaza or Office Building: Ontario’s Waste Audit and Source-Separation Rules for Commercial Owners
Two 1994 regulations still decide which plazas, office buildings, restaurants and hotels need a waste audit and a recycling program. The trigger is different for each building type, and the paperwork they require can carry over to the next owner.
Does an Ontario plaza or office building need a waste audit and a recycling program?
It depends on the building type, and each type has its own trigger. A retail shopping complex is covered when the retail premises in it total at least 10,000 square metres; an office building, or a same-owner group of nearby buildings, when it has at least 10,000 square metres of floor area for use as offices. A restaurant is caught unless its owner’s Ontario restaurants stayed under $3,000,000 in gross sales in each of the two preceding years, or it sits inside a covered complex or building (under 102/94, only if it co-operates with that place’s audit); a hotel or motel when it has more than 75 units; a construction or demolition project at 2,000 square metres or more. Covered owners need an annually updated waste audit and work plan under O. Reg. 102/94 and, in a municipality of at least 5,000 people, a source separation program under O. Reg. 103/94.
Source: Ontario Regulations 102/94 (Waste Audits and Waste Reduction Work Plans) and 103/94 (Industrial, Commercial and Institutional Source Separation Programs) under the Environmental Protection Act, e-Laws (2026)
I’m Arthur Zhao, a Toronto real estate Broker. Picture a buyer two weeks into due diligence on a neighbourhood shopping centre with well over 10,000 square metres of retail space. The rent roll, the roof report and the environmental site assessment are in the data room. Then the property manager mentions, almost in passing, that the building does a waste audit every year, and asks whether the new owner will still want it done.
It is a fair question, and the answer is not a matter of preference. Ontario has had two regulations on the books since 1994 that apply to the owners of certain commercial buildings: O. Reg. 102/94 on waste audits and waste reduction work plans, and O. Reg. 103/94 on source separation programs, the formal name for organized recycling. Whether they apply depends first on what kind of building it is, so that is where this article starts. What the two regulations actually require comes after the building-type walk, followed by what a buyer, or an owner checking on a property manager, should have on paper.
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Retail shopping complexes: the retail floor area is added up
According to Part III of O. Reg. 102/94 (Ontario e-Laws, 2026), the Part applies to the owner of a complex containing premises occupied by establishments that sell goods or services at retail to people who come to them, if the total floor area of those premises is at least 10,000 square metres (s.14). Section 6(1) of O. Reg. 103/94 uses the same test for the recycling program. The count is the combined retail premises, not any one store. If a complex’s retail premises total less than 10,000 square metres, these complex provisions do not apply to it.
A single store can also be caught on its own. Under 102/94 s.9 (and 103/94 s.5), the owner of a retail establishment is covered if the establishment occupies at least 10,000 square metres, or if it sits in a covered complex and its owner is solely responsible for the establishment’s waste management. That second route matters inside a plaza: a tenant that runs its own waste stream becomes a regulated party in its own right, and the complex owner’s audit need not cover that store (102/94 s.15(2)); the complex recycling program likewise need not provide for it (103/94 s.6(3)).
There is one more boundary in 102/94. The complex owner’s audit and work plan cover waste generated at the complex other than the waste generated at premises for which the owner is not responsible, either directly or indirectly, for waste management (s.15(1), s.16(1)). The parallel recycling section in 103/94, s.6(2), is worded as the wastes generated at the complex, and its express carve-out is the s.6(3) one for stores covered by s.5.
Office buildings: office floor area, and buildings counted together
Part VI of 102/94 applies to the owner of a building or group of buildings with at least 10,000 square metres of floor area for use as offices (s.31(1)); 103/94 s.9(1) uses the same threshold for the recycling program. The trigger is office floor area. If the office floor area is below 10,000 square metres, these office provisions do not apply.
The “group of buildings” definition is the part an investor assembling nearby properties should read closely. It means two or more buildings with the same ownership, each in proximity to at least one other such that there is at most one building or other real property of different ownership between the two (102/94 s.31(2); 103/94 s.9(2)). Public roads, public parks and land over which the public has a general right of access are not counted in that test (s.31(3); 103/94 s.9(3)). So two same-owner office buildings separated only by a public street can be measured together, and a portfolio can cross the threshold even when no single building does.
Tenants appear in this Part by name: the owner must include measures for communicating the work plan to its employees and to persons who occupy premises in the building as tenants of the owner, including posting the plan or a summary and letting a tenant who asks look at the full plan (102/94 s.35).
Restaurants: a sales test, plus a location rule worded differently in each regulation
Both regulations apply to the owner of a restaurant, including a take-out restaurant (102/94 s.36(1); 103/94 s.11(1)). Neither uses floor area. According to both regulations (Ontario e-Laws, 2026), the exit is a sales test: the Part does not apply in a calendar year if, in the two preceding calendar years, there was no year in which gross sales for all restaurants the owner operated in Ontario equalled or exceeded $3,000,000, and the owner can show this within seven days of a request from the Director (102/94 s.36(4); 103/94 s.11(4)). Note that the test adds up every restaurant the owner runs in Ontario, not the one location.
The location rule is where the two regulations part ways. 102/94 s.36(2) takes a restaurant out of the audit Part when it occupies premises in a covered retail establishment, complex, office building, hotel or motel, hospital or campus, if the restaurant owner co-operates in the audit and work plan required for that place. 103/94 s.11(3) takes a restaurant in the equivalent places out of its own recycling obligation, and that subsection contains no co-operation condition. For a landlord with food tenants, that difference is worth knowing before writing lease language about audits.
Hotels, and construction or demolition projects, briefly
A hotel or motel is covered when it has more than 75 units (102/94 s.41; 103/94 s.12(1)). For an owner developing or clearing a site, the trigger is a construction or demolition project involving one or more buildings with a total floor area of at least 2,000 square metres (102/94 s.19(1) and s.25(1); 103/94 s.7(1) and s.8(1)). Timing is the point for those projects: the audit report and work plan must be prepared, and the source separation program implemented, before construction or demolition work begins at the site (102/94 s.24(1) and s.30(1); 103/94 s.7(3) and s.8(3)).
What the two regulations each require once a building is in
With the building type settled, the obligations themselves are fairly compact. They sit in two different regulations, and the second one carries a condition the first does not.
O. Reg. 102/94: an audit, a plan, and a yearly refresh
The waste audit has to address the amount, nature and composition of the waste, how it gets produced (including management decisions and policies), and how it is managed (s.2). The waste reduction work plan must set out, to the extent reasonable, plans to reduce, reuse and recycle, who will carry out each part, when, and the expected results, with reduction as the first objective, then reuse, then recycling (s.3). Both are prepared on a Ministry form or in the same format (s.4).
For complexes and office buildings, the owner must update the audit every year after the initial audit (s.15(4), s.32(3)) and, for office buildings, the work plan as well (s.33), implement the plan as updated (s.17, s.34), and communicate it to employees and to occupiers or tenants (s.18, s.35). e-Laws shows no amendments to 102/94, with the consolidation current to October 21, 2026.
O. Reg. 103/94: an on-site recycling program, with a population condition
A source separation program must include collection, handling and storage facilities adequate for the anticipated quantities, measures to make sure the collected material is removed, information for users describing how the program is performing and encouraging full use, and reasonable efforts to see that it is used and the material is reused or recycled (s.2(1)). The owner “shall implement” the program “or shall ensure that such a program is implemented” (for example s.6(2), s.9(1)).
The Schedule lists the categories the program must provide for. For retail complexes and office buildings it is the same six: aluminum food or beverage cans, corrugated cardboard, fine paper, glass food or beverage bottles and jars, newsprint, and steel food or beverage cans (Schedule Parts II and V). Restaurants and hotels add PET food or beverage bottles (Parts VII and VIII). Categories that cannot reasonably be anticipated at the site need not be provided for (s.2(3)).
⚠️The population of at least 5,000 condition belongs to O. Reg. 103/94 only (for example s.6(4), s.9(4), s.11(6)). O. Reg. 102/94 contains no population condition, so a covered complex or office building in a smaller municipality can still owe the audit and work plan even where the 103/94 recycling program section does not apply.
Who the regulations put on the hook, and where tenants meet the rules
The timing rules a buyer should check: six months, every year, five years, seven days
A person who newly becomes subject to an obligation to prepare an audit report or work plan has six months from that point to do it; that six-month window does not apply to the yearly updates (102/94 s.6). Each report and plan must be kept for at least five years after it was prepared, and handed to the Director within seven days of a request (s.5). A new owner or operator does not have to start from scratch if a previous owner or operator did the audit and work plan, provided the new owner updates them as the regulation requires (s.7(1)). An owner with several similar properties may do a single audit and report covering two or more of them if separate audits could reasonably be expected to have similar findings (s.8(1)).
💡 My own judgment is that a buyer of a covered plaza or office building should treat the waste audit file as a closing deliverable, not as an operating chore that can be sorted out later. The yearly update rule means there should be a run of reports, and the five-year retention rule means the seller should be able to produce them. Section 7 of 102/94 lets a new owner carry that file forward and update it instead of commissioning a fresh audit. If there is no file, s.7 has nothing to carry forward, and once the new owner holds the file, a request from the Director comes with a seven-day clock (s.5(2)). A complete set of reports and plans is something you can ask for in the agreement, the same way you would ask for service contracts or the rent roll.
What to pull together before you buy, or before you sign off on your property manager
These apply if the property meets one of the triggers above. If it is below the trigger for its building type, the corresponding provisions do not apply.
- ☐Request every waste audit report and waste reduction work plan from the last five years (102/94 s.5(1)).
- ☐Confirm there is an update for each year after the initial audit, not one old report (s.15(4), s.32(3)).
- ☐Check that the documents follow the Ministry form or the same format (s.4).
- ☐Ask whether one audit covers several of the seller’s properties, and on what basis (s.8(1)).
- ☐Walk the collection and storage area and compare it with the six Schedule categories for complexes or offices (103/94 Sched. Parts II and V).
- ☐Get the hauling arrangement that removes collected material (103/94 s.2(1)(b)).
- ☐Look for the posted work plan or summary where occupiers or tenants will see it (102/94 s.18, s.35).
- ☐Check whether the municipality has a population of at least 5,000, which decides whether 103/94’s program sections apply.
- ☐Find which premises the landlord handles waste for, directly or indirectly, and which tenants run their own (102/94 s.15(1)).
- ☐Identify any store solely responsible for its own waste management, which carries its own obligations (102/94 s.9(b)).
- ☐Read restaurant leases for a duty to co-operate with the building’s audit and work plan (102/94 s.36(2)).
- ☐Note how the lease allocates the cost of waste and recycling service, and check that it matches which party actually runs each part of the program.
Buying a Small Ontario Plaza? The Fire Code Records the Seller Should Be Able to Hand You →Leasing to a Dry Cleaner or Auto Shop: Environmental Clauses for Commercial Landlords →Building Condition Assessments for Commercial Buyers: What a BCA Prices In That a Home Inspection Never Will →First-Time Renter Guide →
Frequently Asked Questions
If I buy a building that already has a waste audit, do I have to start over?
Not necessarily. O. Reg. 102/94 s.7(1) says a new owner or operator does not need a new waste audit or work plan if a previous owner or operator prepared one, as long as the new owner updates the audit and plan as the regulation requires. That is why the seller’s past reports are worth asking for.
How long do I have after my property becomes subject to the waste audit rules?
Six months. Under O. Reg. 102/94 s.6(1), a person who becomes subject to an obligation to prepare a waste audit report or work plan must do so within six months of becoming subject to it. That window does not apply to the yearly updated reports and plans (s.6(2)).
I own two office buildings across the street from each other. Do their floor areas count together?
They can. Both regulations count a same-owner group of buildings toward the 10,000 square metre office threshold when there is at most one building or property of different ownership between them, and public roads, public parks and publicly accessible land are not counted in that test (102/94 s.31(2)-(3); 103/94 s.9(2)-(3)).
What has to go in the recycling bins at a plaza or office building?
O. Reg. 103/94’s Schedule lists six categories for retail complexes and office buildings: aluminum and steel food or beverage cans, corrugated cardboard, fine paper, glass food or beverage bottles and jars, and newsprint. A category that cannot reasonably be anticipated at the site need not be provided for (s.2(3)).
I own several similar plazas. Can one waste audit cover all of them?
Possibly. O. Reg. 102/94 s.8(1) lets a person with audit obligations for more than one establishment, complex or building conduct a single audit and prepare a single report for two or more of them, if it is reasonable to expect separate audits would have similar findings. Whether your properties meet that test is a fact question for each portfolio.
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