A standardized waste data map is expected to provide consistent direction for users on multiple paths. The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) is developing the third of its trio of environmental data standards in sync with mounting pressure on various industry players to accurately report the volume of waste they produce, disseminate and divert from landfill.

Proponents of OSCRE’s in-progress waste data management standard are working to categorize the myriad inputs that flow into the waste stream, and wrestle them into a framework that enables credible analytics and performance comparisons. That would underpin the collection and retrieval of information that’s increasingly in demand from:

• retailers and other corporate/institutional players that may be accountable under extended producer responsibility (EPR) or product stewardship schemes;
• firms with voluntary commitments and/or looming regulatory requirements to disclose Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions;
• participants in other certification and benchmarking programs; and
• property/facility managers looking for operational cost savings.

“What’s going to be great about a data model is it will give us visibility of what’s pushing waste into the supply chain,” Stephen Weir, chief executive officer of the sustainability consulting firm, Radar 2030, observed during a recent OSCRE webinar. “Then we can look at the massive pile of waste that’s at the end and see where it was inserted, how it was inserted and what we can do to remove it.”

EPR motivation

EPR compliance has emerged as a major motivator for the project. In Canada, all provinces/territories except Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut and Northwest Territories compel those who convey designated products into the marketplace to cover at least a portion of the costs of collecting and recovering or disposing of those materials, while many jurisdictions throughout North America have been ramping up obligations in recent years.

In Ontario, for example, Jan. 1, 2026 marked the full implementation of a 100 per cent producer-funded system for managing Blue Box materials after a three-year, phase-in period. Designated producers of six types of materials collected from residential and specified institutional properties — paper, rigid plastic, flexible plastic, glass, metal and beverage containers — pay their share based on the amount of those commodities they delivered to the Ontario marketplace during the previous calendar year.

Since 2024, program rules require producers to report those tallies to the provincial registry, known as the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), by May 31 each year and pay their fees at that time. This year, producers with annual revenue in excess of $2 million can expect to pay $9.70 per tonne if they generated more than 50 tonnes of Blue Box materials in 2025. Those that generated less than 50 tonnes, but more than the threshold for exemption (9 tonnes of paper; 2 tonnes of plastic; or 1 tonne of glass, metal or beverage containers) will be charged a flat fee of $95.

Depending on where they fall on that scale, designated producers could face steeper costs for failing to register or submit required information to the RPRA. For corporations, neglecting to file “complete and accurate” information carries a base fine of up to $50,000 along with a supplemental fee reflective of the costs they avoided or benefits they gained by evading the mandate. Ongoing non-compliance triggers further penalties.

Additional reporting requirements kick in next year. That’s when producers will have to submit a data verification report for their 2026 numbers and the first triennial audit report, covering the years 2024, 2025 and 2026. The latter tracks whether they’ve fulfilled material recovery targets (i.e. 80 per cent of paper or 50 per cent of rigid plastic delivered into the Ontario marketplace) and related promotion/education obligations.

Looking to examples in the United States, panellists participating in the OSCRE webinar speculate EPR uptake at the state level is approaching a tipping point toward widescale adoption. Jim Owens, president of Marrad, a service provider for materials management, and Joshua Witte, director of energy, sustainability and ESG with the U.S.-based national retailer, Dollar Tree, identified Oregon, Colorado and California — where levies have recently been introduced or are looming — as early attention-getters.

“In Oregon, I think there were many organizations that were caught off guard, not only by the fees, but by the magnitude of the fees. When it gets to California, which is coming up soon, I think that’s when you’re going to see a seismic shift,” Owens predicted. “This is a cost that is, in some cases, tremendous, and it’s hitting large organizations and mid-sized organizations particularly hard.”

Dollar Tree estimates indicate it will cost the company more than $15 million to comply with EPR requirements coming into force in Colorado and California. Witte confirms the calculation engendered dismay in the finance department, which had neither anticipated nor budgeted for it and did not have a line item to expense it against.

“I would say this would be a perfect example of data gaps and the impact of not having that data readily available,” he said. “Unless you can put together solid estimates on the weight of your packaging and how much you’re bringing in, it’s incredibly challenging to put together proper reporting. We have hundreds of different vendors that supply our products, and we do not have good visibility into the data around that packaging as far as amounts and weights. It’s very, very disjointed and trying to get that data has been very, very problematic.”

Data demands and gaps

OSCRE delineates five stages of progress in the collection, management and practical application of waste data, ranging from initial estimates to a yet-to-be-realized “pioneering” level. Ian Cameron, OSCRE’s chief innovation officer, suggests the majority of companies are still at stage two with fairly basic data that’s sourced from waste haulers and largely held within one department’s systems. The data management standard is tapped as a vehicle for getting to the next level so that waste data could be integrated into the general ledger, tied to circularity metrics and accommodate diagnostic analysis.

“That’s what we need to do, but many organizations struggle to make that leap,” Cameron said.

Owens acknowledged “it’s not uncommon to see data capture on clipboards” among his client base, while few have tracking capabilities more sophisticated than spreadsheets. Elsewhere, waste data coverage has consistently lagged energy, water and GHG emissions in the annual results of the GRESB global benchmark for ESG performance of commercial real estate portfolios. The assessment asks for an asset-level tally of the total amount of waste generated and a percentage breakdown of its disposal outcome through recycling, reuse, composting, incineration or landfill.

In 2025, participants reported waste data for 58 per cent of assets across the total database, while providing energy data for nearly 79 per cent of assets, water-use data for 77.5 per cent of assets and GHG emissions for 79.5 per cent of assets. Within the database for the Amercias region, which largely represents portfolios based in the U.S. and Canada, waste data was reported for just 50 per cent of assets.

Nevertheless, GRESB administrators express enthusiasm for this highest to-date response. “With this strong baseline in place, the GRESB Foundation will aim to support clearer connections between waste management practices and emissions outcomes to help reward best practices in reduction, diversion and circularity,” states the overview of the 2025 results.

That comes as many firms grapple with measuring their Scope 3 GHG emissions, either to meet voluntary commitments or as real estate entities of federally regulated financial institutions, which will be required to report beginning with the 2028 fiscal year. For the latter group, instructions from Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) also require disclosure of the industry-based metrics that underpin their reporting.

Speaking earlier this winter at a seminar sponsored by the Canada Green Building Council, Melissa Menzies, director of sustainable finance with Scotiabank, noted a “spectrum on the maturity scale in terms of disclosure” even among large publicly traded real estate owners and operators.

“I’d say most of my clients are regularly reporting and having verified Scope 1 and 2 emissions. On Scope 3, it’s about starting to focus on what are the most material categories and beginning to report that on a staged approach over their portfolio,” she related. “It might be waste collection, for example — taking a staged approach and being transparent on where they’re at with data gathering, what they expect to do in the next one to three years. That’s a common theme that I’ve seen.”

The OSCRE webinar presented a sample structure for data capture with five broad elements that can be further refined into subsets where needed:

• waste category (landfill, recycling, organics, etc.);
• material type (cardboard, plastics, food waste, etc.);
• destination (recycling, reuse, compost, landfill, etc.);
• cost elements (hauling, disposal fees, revenue, etc.); and
• source and location (site, building, tenant, department).

“What we care about is information capture and integrating systems of governance,” Cameron advised.

“It doesn’t have to be complex. While a data model might sound like a grand thing, it’s actually just going to be using IT to gather existing data and present it in a useful format,” Weir affirmed. “I would encourage people to start mapping data, even if it’s on a spreadsheet or even on a clipboard, but then to look at how the OSCRE tools in this data model can help and get some benchmarks around that visibility.”