Jack McGinnis: The Great Green Life of Ontario’s Blue Box Pioneer
“We Recycle” – these are the words stencilled on the side of your blue box. Do we ever! Ontarians divert an impressive 870, 000 tonnes of waste from landfills every year with blue box recycling.
Toss it in the box. Put the box on the curb. Repeat every other week. Simple, isn’t it?
But what if you didn’t have a blue box? Would you drive your soup cans to the depot yourself? Can you imagine lugging dozens of empty juice bottles and pop cans onto city transit? Probably not.
We have Jack McGinnis, Ontario’s “Father of the blue box,” to thank for introducing the world’s first blue box in 1977. His simple plastic container and his idea to organize curb side pickup revolutionized residential recycling.
McGinnis died peacefully on January 29th, 2011 at the age of 64, leaving behind an environmental legacy in recycling, sustainability and education.
Forty years ago, you could find McGinnis in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood offering to collect cans and bottles off the curb in front of peoples’ homes.
McGinnis believed people would recycle if it were easy. So, he made it easy. He created a box to hold materials and made sure a truck came to take them away. No hassle for the homeowner and literally tonnes of recyclable materials kept out of landfills.
Today, 96 per cent of Ontarians have access to a blue box program. Millions of people in North America, Australia and Europe use blue boxes. From its humble beginnings as a pilot project on a military base in Simcoe County to its iconic status today, McGinnis’ blue box program is an international symbol of recycling.
A plastic blue box, simple white letters, and one remarkable idea. Jack McGinnis was a visionary Ontarian we can all be proud to remember.
- Jack McGinnis founded the Recycling Council of Ontario
- He co-founded Durham Sustain Ability
- He led the recycling project for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics
To read the full story of the blue box, visit http://www.sustain-ability.ca/blue-box-story.php.
