Environment Secretary Steven Guilbeault and several other ministers and Liberal MPs will present the plastic ban at a series of events across the country today. Guilbeault is also expected to discuss plans to impose a minimum amount of recycled content on other plastic items, as the government seeks to create a larger market for recycled plastic in Canada. Draft regulations banning six plastics were released in December and the government should have at least a six-month phased period following the publication of the final regulations this month. Only six specifically made plastic items will be affected by the original ban, as the government decided it was difficult to recycle but they have easy alternatives. They include straws, packed containers, grocery bags, cutlery, sticks and plastic rings used to hold six boxes or bottles together. The move comes almost three years after Prime Minister Justin Trindade promised for the first time that his government would phase out the production and use of plastics that are difficult to recycle, as it targets zero plastic waste by the end of the decade. He initially said the ban would take effect in 2021, but the scientific assessment of the plastics needed to implement the ban was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ongoing court case
Following this assessment, which was finalized in October 2020, the government designated the plastics as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This designation was required before any items could be banned. A coalition of plastic manufacturers has sued the government over the designation in May 2021, with the case expected to be heard sometime this year. Plastic waste is a growing problem around the world, as it is estimated that 10 percent or less of most manufactured plastics are recycled. Environment Secretary Steven Guilbeault and several other ministers and Liberal MPs will present the plastic ban at a series of events across the country today. (Cad Hipolito / The Canadian Press) A research study published by Environment and Climate Change Canada in 2019 found that 3.3 million tonnes of plastic were thrown away, almost half of them plastic packaging. Less than a tenth of it was recycled. Most of the plastic ended up in landfills, where it would take hundreds of years to decompose. An estimated 29,000 tonnes ended up as plastic pollution, garbage from parks, forests, waterways and shores with cigarette butts, food wrappers and disposable coffee cups. The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup project in 2019 removed more than 163,000 kilograms of plastic waste from nearly 4,000 kilometers of coastline in Canada. The documented retrieval included more than 12,000 plastic bottles, 12,480 plastic straws and nearly 17,000 plastic bags. Federal figures show that in 2019, 15.5 billion plastic grocery bags, 4.5 billion plastic cutlery, three billion stirring sticks, 5.8 billion straws, 183 million rings and 805 packages of six packages were sold in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia have already taken their own measures against plastic bags, as have some cities, such as Regina and Montreal. Some retailers have also moved faster than the government, with Sobeys scrapping disposable plastic bags in its coffers by 2020 and Walmart following last April. Many fast food outlets have also replaced plastic straws with paper ones in recent years.
