On December 20, 2022, Canada’s single-use plastic ban came into effect. What exactly does this mean? And why did Canada ban plastics? Keep reading for the details.
Were you surprised by this sudden ban? If it did, I want to bring you back to 2018 when Canada announced its Zero Plastic Waste Agenda. I remember this like it was yesterday. I started my first co-op job in January 2019 at a municipal waste site. I was researching this strategy and how it may impact local operations.
The Agenda (or Strategy) outlined Canada’s approach to reducing marine litter, cultivating scientific innovation, and more. It was around this time that the federal government mentioned banning single-use plastics. The Agenda is divided into two Phases. Unsurprisingly, implementation was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, plastic waste was back on the national priority list in 2022, especially in the lead-up to COP15 in Montreal. The federal government announced the ban in June 2022, and it came into effect just month.
The ban includes six items:
- checkout bags;
- cutlery;
- foodservice ware made from or containing problematic plastics that are hard to recycle;
- ring carriers;
- stir sticks; and
- straws (with some exceptions for accessibility)
Has your local grocery store or Walmart stopped carrying plastic bags and started offering paper or material ones? That’s because of the plastic ban. If effective, the federal government anticipates it will cut 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and at least 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution, equal to over one million bags of garbage.
Recognizing that this transition is no simple task and that businesses currently have huge stockpiles of these items, the government is giving them until December 2023 to sell all of their existing stock. As of last month, they cannot produce more.
By 2025, the government plans to escalate the ban by banning the export of plastics internationally. Canada has a problematic history of exporting plastics and plastic waste. Even when you put plastic items in the recycling bin that are recyclable (because not all plastics are!), only 9% of these plastics are properly recycled in Canada.
The federal government recognizes these gaps and is taking steps to close them. They have also set a goal of collecting 90% of plastic beverage bottles for recycling, developing regulations that require plastic bottles to be made of 50% recycled content, and developing rules for labelling recyclable and compostable plastics. The latter is a HUGE deal for reasons I have discussed extensively.
Is this ban a positive step forward?
This ban is a great step towards a sustainable future. That said, it’s one thing to say we’re going to do something. It’s another thing to do it. Canada tends to fall short on the doing side of things, especially with sustainability pledges.
On the good side, this ban will help Canada meet its old and new biodiversity protection pledges, including the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, formed at COP15 in November 2022. Canada has promised to protect 25% of its land and oceans by 2025 and 30% by 2030. Reducing plastic pollution is necessary to achieve this goal. Plastics are harmful to the environment because they take hundreds to thousands of years to break down. They also produce microplastics, which contain of toxic chemicals that harm ecosystems when absorbed into plants or consumed by wildlife. A crucial step to reducing this environmental harm is to reduce some of the largest sources, which include the six banned items.
Another positive is that the ban may incentivize a lower consumption society. Rather than create single-use alternatives to plastic ring carriers or stir sticks, what if we just stop using them? Of course, there are some things we still need – we can’t carry all of our groceries by hand, so some sort of bag is necessary. But citizens are more incentivized to bring their own bags to the stores because they may have to pay for a cloth/paper bag, or not have bags available at all. This is not a perfect solution, though. We need to consider the disproportionate impacts on lower-income citizens, those with physical disabilities, and others who rely on the accessibility of convenient products. A growing concern is the “mounds” of reusable bags being collected and thrown away. I live in a tiny apartment and don’t have the space to collect reusable bags every time I shop. These bags – like the bright blue Walmart ones – may be produced with dyes and materials that will harm the environment if they end up in our ecosystems. As for paper alternatives, including straws and bags, is deforestation an appropriate solution to plastic pollution? Some paper products are made more responsibly than others, but not all are.
There are some cool, innovative projects taking place ahead of the ban to manage our single-use lifestyles. One example close to me is A Friendlier Company, a reusable container program that partners with local restaurants to cut down their takeout waste by providing a deposit-based service to customers. It’s a great alternative if you have access to a smartphone and their app. That said, not all municipalities have a program like this. And not everyone has access to an app. Another option being encouraged in dine-in settings is to replace stir sticks or straws with metal cutlery and reusable straws. Again, this is great, but such materials are not supportive of people with disabilities that make their use challenging. And don’t get me started on the “bioplastic” alternatives that are NOT compostable in most municipal waste systems in Canada.
Final thoughts
Overall, I believe that this ban is crucial for a sustainable future. We cannot continue producing plastics without creating catastrophic harm. It’s not perfect and will not solve the problems within a capitalist society. It won’t stop rapid consumerism. There will also be enforcement issues, so the ban will likely take years of implementation and monitoring before we see a positive change.
For this ban to promote environmental sustainability and environmental justice, it needs to consider the diverse groups affected by it. A sustainable future is not one that further disadvantages marginalized populations (especially elderly, low-income, racialized, and Indigenous populations) who were forced into consumerism ways, and now have the least capacity to change their behaviours to suit the ban. While the ban does consider accessibility concerns for plastic straws, I haven’t found much else about how this plan was made with equity in mind, or how the government will support the most marginalized populations during this transition. This is a crucial next step.
I’m interested to see where this ban goes and how the government follows through on its pledges. If you want to learn more about Canada’s history with plastics and waste, check out these posts:
What do you think about Canada’s new plastic ban? What do we need for it to be effective? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time.
Photos retrieved from Government of Canada (2022).