Adopting Sustainability: Greywater Recycling and Ontario's Transitioning Water Management Regime

Greywater is a technology with the potential to reduce water demand. This paper looks to answer, is Ontario's water management regime is undergoing a sustainability transition that is conducive of greywater technology's adoption? The multi-level perspective has been applied as a theoretical framework to comprehend this as a technological transition within a sociotechnical system. The multi-level perspective perceives transitions to be the result of interactions between actors at multiple levels of a system. Policy was identified as the dominant factor in determining the answer posed by this research. Selections from Ontario's policy-led planning structure illustrate how the province's water management regime is currently transitioning toward sustainability objectives that are accepting of greywater technology. However, widespread adoption of the technology has not occurred. A review of key barriers suggests that amendments in policy could potentially facilitate adoption of the technology.