Okay. Thank you.
Innovation is very important in our business because things change every day. In the old days, we hand-sorted. Now we mechanical-sort and optical-sort. That means efficiency. I would like to share with you information on our costs for the region of Halton. It's only 78¢ a tonne for the blue box costs. That's for the integrated ones, not the other ones, because they did not employ the most innovative system to do so.
I'd like to give you our recommendations. As you say, that's the most important part. We spend lots of money on innovation, and I'd like to make our recommendations to you.
Our company employs a thousand people. I've read the same thing that Peter has, in reference to the Conference Board, where they talk about 4.88 full-time equivalents if we recycle one thousand tonnes of recyclables. Right now we understand that we only recycle 11% of our six million tonnes of our garbage in Ontario. If commercial businesses followed the residential sector and diverted 38% of their waste, they would be able to increase job creation by 12,000 people. If we extended that nationwide, you can imagine how big that opportunity would be. Of course, with jobs we have a multiplier effect in terms of economic development.
The next thing I'd like to encourage you to do, and recommend that you provide, is R and D. I'm not here to ask you for money. The important thing is that I'd like you to create an agency to give one-stop shopping so that we don't have to go through a stack of paper to find out where we get help.
The next recommendation I'd like to make—