Canada officially tosses plastic in the 'toxic' bin
Plastic is now considered toxic under Canada’s primary environmental law — the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) — the Trudeau government announced Wednesday.
The decision, which comes despite months of lobbying by Canada’s $28-billion plastics industry, paves the way for a proposed ban on some single-use items. A series by Canada’s National Observer earlier this year catalogued the sustained push by the plastics and food industries to disassociate plastics from anything to do with the word "toxic."
However, the government held firm, which now clears the way for other measures to reduce plastic waste proposed by the government last fall.
“This is the critical step,” said Ashley Wallis, plastics campaigner for Oceana Canada. “It’s the key that unlocks so many possibilities to help us actually address the plastic pollution crisis.”
About 3.3 million tonnes of plastic is discarded in Canada each year, and less than 10 per cent — about 305,000 tonnes — is recycled. The remainder goes to landfills, incineration, or leaks into rivers, lakes and oceans, according to a 2019 study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).
The industry is also poised to drive continued oil and gas extraction, with some petrochemical companies expecting it to account for up to 90 per cent of their future growth, according to a 2020 report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative.
A 2020 government science assessment found ample evidence that plastic harms the environment, choking seabirds, cetaceans and other wildlife. The findings form the basis of the government’s decision, as substances can be considered toxic under CEPA if they harm the environment and biodiversity, human health, or both.
In October 2020, ECCC released a proposal to deal with the problem. Under the proposed rules, Canada will ban six single-use plastic items, like straws and six-pack rings, create incentives for companies to use recycled plastic, and force plastic producers to pay for recycling.
But none of these measures are possible unless plastic falls under CEPA’s Schedule 1 — the law's list of toxic substances.
“Once something is added to Schedule 1, the government actually has a requirement to act — so something needs to be done to address the issue,” said Wallis. “It is possible they could choose not to regulate and just move forward with voluntary agreements, but I (think) they are planning to move ahead with their proposed ban on single-use plastics.”
So far, the government appears intent on proceeding with its plan.
“Adding plastic manufactured items to Schedule 1 of (CEPA) will help us move forward on our comprehensive plan to keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment,” said Moira Kelly, press secretary to Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. “It will allow us to implement our proposed ban of certain harmful single-use plastics, make producers responsible for their plastic waste, and introduce recycled content standards.”
The move is opposed by Canada’s plastics industry. In a Wednesday statement, the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada — the country’s largest plastic lobby group — expressed concerns about the government’s approach. The organization has been vocal against listing plastics as toxic: It has spent months lobbying the government to prevent the decision and advocated for an industry-led approach focused on recycling instead.
Plastic recycling was invented by the plastics industry in the 1970s to assuage environmental concerns without substantially reducing plastic consumption, according to Max Liboiron, an expert on plastic waste and a professor at Memorial University.
It has never worked. Despite decades of effort, only about nine per cent of Canada’s plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the 2019 ECCC-commissioned study.
“I think the days of waiting for recycling to work are over,” said Karen Wirsig, program manager for Environmental Defence. The organization has been working closely with several others, including Oceana Canada, to push the government to enact stronger plastics rules. “We need to reduce the amount of plastic that gets put on the market and therefore, into the environment. We need to find alternatives to plastics in many cases.”
That means developing rules that prioritize the reuse of plastic items over recycling them. That’s not yet a major priority in the government’s proposed rules — and should be, Wallis emphasized.
“Recycling is not on its own going to solve this issue. We would like to see additional commitments to (for instance) refillable beverage containers or reusable packaging or … reuse targets,” she said.
“Those kinds of things are really going to enable the kind of circular economy we want to see.”
Here is an article from a Canadian Newspaper which is very good.
For the first 50 years after plastic was invented, the idea of only using the long-lasting material once was blasphemous, an affront to values of frugality honed over years of war and economic strife.
Then, in the late 1950s, the plastics industry launched a massive marketing campaign — and single-use plastic was born.
“The happy day has arrived when nobody any longer considers plastic packages too good to throw away,” Lloyd Stouffer said at the 1963 U.S. National Plastic Conference. Stouffer was a U.S. plastics marketing guru and the man who, in 1956, first pitched the idea that a virtually indestructible material — plastic — should be sold as disposable.
Since then, about 8.3 billion tonnes have been produced; most has been thrown out. Landfills are stuffed. Oceans and the animals in them are choked. Plastic particles are even showing up in human placentas, with unknown health impacts.
Plastic is everywhere: Manhattan, the Marianas Trench, even Mars.
Faced with this ecological crisis, dozens of Canadian municipalities and provinces have joined a growing global movement against plastic pollution. They have introduced bans and crafted new waste management legislation to try to control the problem.
Recently, the federal government jumped in, announcing plans for a national waste strategy that would list plastics as toxic under Schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) and a ban on some single-use plastics. Most importantly, the plan calls for a new “circular economy” that would rely on massively scaling up existing recycling facilities and still-nascent recycling technologies to keep disposable plastic ubiquitous in our daily lives.
But can recycling really save us?
“Any material in the world can be recycled — if you separate it, prepare it and pay enough money to put it through the (recycling) process. The question is, is there a market for it? That’s what drives recycling,” says Samantha MacBride, an expert in solid waste management and a professor of urban environmental studies at the Marxe School of Public Affairs at Baruch College of CUNY in New York City.
“It’s a great industry — it provides jobs, it makes use of what’s around — but it doesn’t have anything directly to do with improving the environment.”
Canadians dispose of about 3.3 million tonnes of plastic each year, according to a 2019 study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), almost half of which is packaging. Well over three-quarters currently goes to landfills, a small proportion is incinerated and about one per cent ends up directly in the environment.
Only nine per cent — or 305,000 tonnes — is recycled, the 2019 study found.
Left: A pile of garbage found at Sarstangen on the west coast of Svalbard, Norway. Photo by Christian Åslund / Greenpeace | Right: A northern gannet entangled in a green fishing net in the U.K. waters of the North Sea. Photo by Marten van Dijl / Greenpeace
That’s no surprise. Low oil prices make it difficult for plastic recyclers, who must invest in expensive sorting and processing facilities, to compete against already established petrochemical manufacturers, whose facilities are well integrated with the oil and gas industry. It’s cheaper to make plastic from so-called “virgin oil” and put the waste in landfills than it is to recycle old plastics into new products.
Oil and natural gas producers are betting heavily on continued growth in virgin plastic production, with the industry expected to soon account for between 45 and 95 per cent of global growth in demand for oil and natural gas, according to a September report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative.
How tech barriers stand in the way of recycling
Beyond economics, recycled plastic production is hindered by available technology. Mechanical recycling, a method where plastics are sorted and shredded before being melted down into pellets to make new products, is by far the most common form of recycling in Canada. For the process to be effective, however, the stream of plastics entering the recycling facility needs to be clean and well sorted — a requirement that is difficult to meet.
The variety of plastics on the market adds to the challenge: There are over a dozen types, each with different melting points and manufacturing requirements. Many are also incorporated into different parts of the same consumer product, which makes sorting difficult or impossible.
Dyes and other (sometimes poisonous) additives, like plasticizers and fire retardants, further complicate the process and diminish the recycled product’s final quality. With the exception of easy-to-sort, single-use bottles like those used for water or pop, few mechanically recycled plastics can be reused to hold food, according to a December 2020 report by Greenpeace Canada.
There is some promise in a suite of new recycling technologies, collectively called “advanced" or "chemical" recycling, which break plastics down into their molecular components so they can be remade into like-new products. Proponents are optimistic the new methods will be cleaner and more efficient, but observers have doubts. They also face substantial market challenges in Canada, pushing some to advance business ventures in Europe, where regulations forcing plastic manufacturers to use recycled plastic in their products make investments in the technology financially viable. Similar regulations are included in the federal government's planned plastic regulations, first announced in October.
These technical and market limitations mean Canada’s existing recycling industry focuses almost exclusively on four easy-to-recycle plastics:
- polyethylene terephthalate (PET), common in carpets, cups and water bottles
- high-density polyethylene (HDPE), common in milk jugs, outdoor furniture and pipes
- low-density polyethylene (LDPE), common in bread and trash bags
- polypropylene (PP), common in straws, auto parts and juice bottles
Other plastic products — from Spandex to vinyl siding — are mostly landfilled.
And when it comes to market share, producers of recycled plastics remain small players. Sales of recycled plastics in Canada were worth about $350 million in 2016 — 30 times less than sales of plastic made from virgin oil, the 2019 ECCC study noted.
Shifting responsibility
Regardless, the claim that recycling is the panacea for plastic pollution has been promoted for decades by the plastics industry and its allies, says Max Liboiron, professor of geography at Memorial University and director of the CLEAR laboratory on plastic pollution.
"Recycling was formalized and launched in 1970 on Earth Day … by the Container Corporation of America, which had sponsored a design competition for the now-universal recycling symbol," explains Liboiron. Industry’s hope was that recycling would assuage growing concerns among Americans (and Canadians) about the environmental and aesthetic impact of pollution, including from disposable plastic.
Global plastic production skyrocketed after 1950, increasing more than tenfold to reach about 35 million tonnes by 1970. Very little of it was recycled, and plastic soon infiltrated every facet of society, from grocery stores to hospitals.
I found this article to be very informative and interesting.
I think that what they are writing about is the same as the rest of us in Europe are writing about too.
The blog song for today is: " My brother Jake " by Free
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