Tire Recycling Fees in Canada (2026) — What They Are and What You Pay in Every Province

You buy four tires, you get to the total, and there's a line you weren't expecting: an environmental fee, an eco fee, a tire recycling fee. Different retailers call it different things, which doesn't help.

It's a fair thing to be suspicious of. Plenty of businesses bury junk fees at checkout and hope you don't ask. This one isn't that — but you shouldn't have to take our word for it, so here's exactly what it is, who sets it, and what it costs everywhere in Canada.

What the fee actually is

Every province in Canada runs a scrap tire recycling program. Roughly 30 million tires come off Canadian vehicles every year, and before these programs existed a lot of them ended up in landfills, in ditches, or stacked in fields — where they collect standing water, breed mosquitoes, and burn spectacularly badly when they catch.

The programs fixed that, and they're funded the obvious way: a set amount collected on every new tire sold, which pays for collecting and processing the old one. The tires get shredded into crumb rubber and turned into playground surfacing, athletic tracks, rubber mats, and road base.

So the fee on your invoice isn't paying us to dispose of your old tires. It's funding the province-wide program that makes tire recycling work at all.

Who sets the rate — and why it isn't us

This is the part worth understanding, because it explains why the fee isn't negotiable and why it's identical everywhere you shop.

The province sets the amount. Each one has its own program with its own published rate schedule. We don't choose the number, we can't discount it, and we don't mark it up. A retailer who "waives the eco fee" is either eating it themselves or quietly building it into the tire price.

It's charged per tire, not per order. Four tires means four times the fee. That's how the programs are structured — the cost of recycling scales with the number of tires, so the fee does too.

It varies by where the tires are going. Not where you're buying from. Ship a set to Newfoundland and you'll pay Newfoundland's rate, because that's the program that will eventually recycle them.

What it costs, province by province

Current as of August 2026. These rates get revised — sometimes annually — so treat this as a snapshot rather than a permanent truth.

A few things worth flagging in that table:

Truck tires cost meaningfully more. A medium or heavy truck tire is several times the mass of a passenger tire and takes correspondingly more to process. In BC the gap is more than three to one.

Prince Edward Island splits differently. PEI's law draws the line at rim size — anything over a 17-inch rim pays the higher rate, regardless of what it's fitted to. With 18-, 20-, and 22-inch wheels now routine on ordinary SUVs and light trucks, a lot of everyday passenger tires land in PEI's upper tier.

Quebec's truck rate is the outlier. At $6.00 it's far below the rest, because Quebec structures its program around tire diameter and simply stops applying the fee above a certain size rather than escalating it.

Several provinces have additional tiers for agricultural, off-road, and industrial tires — Alberta's largest off-road category runs to $200 per tire. If you're buying anything beyond passenger or highway truck tires, ask specifically.

Tax applies on top

In every province, sales tax is calculated on the fee as well as the tire. A $6.00 fee in Ontario becomes $6.78 with HST.

This surprises people, and it's a reasonable thing to be annoyed about, but it isn't a retailer's decision — the fee forms part of the taxable purchase price. Saskatchewan is the one partial exception, where the fee is exempt from provincial sales tax when it's itemized separately on the invoice, though GST still applies.

Ontario works a little differently

Worth knowing if you're comparing quotes here.

Ontario overhauled its program in 2019. Instead of one government-set rate, tire producers became individually responsible for recovering the tires they put into the market, and most of them contract that work out to a producer responsibility organization. Those organizations set their own rates.

In practice the market has converged — $6.00 for passenger, $16.00 for truck, as of the August 2026 revision — which is why you'll see roughly the same number everywhere. But because there's no single legislated tariff, small differences between retailers are legitimate rather than someone padding the bill.

What you should expect to see

A straight answer on all of this is a decent test of who you're buying from.

• The fee should be itemized, not folded into the tire price. Some provinces require it. Either way, you should be able to see it.
• The number should match the table above for your province, per tire.
• All-in pricing is what matters when comparing quotes. A tire that's $8 cheaper from a retailer who quietly adds the fee at the last step isn't cheaper.

If a quote seems oddly low, ask whether it includes the recycling fee and installation. That's usually where the difference is hiding.

Common questions

Can I avoid it by keeping my old tires? No. The fee is charged on the new tire you're buying, not on the disposal of the old one. It funds the program regardless of what you personally do with your old set.

Do I pay it again if I get a warranty replacement? Generally yes, since a new tire is entering the market. Policies vary — worth asking at the time of the claim.

Is it charged on used tires? No. The programs apply to new tire sales.

What about a spare that comes with a new vehicle? It's built into the vehicle price. Some provinces set a specific blended rate for new vehicles covering all five tires.

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We charge these fees because they're required, at the rate the province sets, itemized so you can see them. If a fee on one of our invoices doesn't match what's above, tell us — that's a mistake worth fixing, not a policy worth defending.