Time to overhaul the throwaway culture, says Vancouver ocean advocate
Credit to Author: Tiffany Crawford| Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 17:19:40 +0000
A Vancouver-based ocean advocacy group is applauding Canada’s move to ban single-use plastics, but says it’s going to take an overhaul of the throwaway culture to address the crisis.
Chloé Dubois, president of Ocean Legacy Foundation, says while banning plastic straws and bags is a good start, there needs to be an overall assessment done by the government on how plastic is used in everything from food packaging to consumer goods like toys. And, she added, Canada needs a plan to deal with the plastic garbage in the ocean from derelict fishing gear, such as netting, ropes and floats.
Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada released a scientific study on Thursday that found there is more than enough evidence that plastic is a threat to human and animal health.
The report estimated 29,000 tonnes of plastic garbage, the equivalent of about 2.3 billion single-use plastic water bottles, ended up as litter in Canada in 2016 on land, in the water, and in the air in the form of micro plastics.
While the report found that more evidence is needed to study the health impacts of micro plastics (pieces smaller than five millimetres,) there is overwhelming evidence that macro plastics are harming wildlife. Whales have washed up on shore and birds are dying, their bellies full of plastic containers and nylon ropes.
Following its release, Ottawa pledged to ban single-use plastics such as straws, take-out containers, and shopping bags by 2021.
However, Dubois is concerned with the move by companies to replace single-use plastic with other disposable items still headed to the landfills.
“Replacing single-use with more single-use is not the answer. The underlying message in all of this is our resource consumption. Our planet cannot sustain the amount of resources we are extracting and not recirculating into a closed-loop system,” she said.
An example of a closed-loop system would be companies providing a product and then collecting and refilling that product, kind of like the old milk bottle delivery system.
“We need to be completely reframing and redesigning our commodity markets and how products are being produced and how they are being collected. That full life cycle needs to be assessed with every product, which is an enormous task,” said Dubois.
Canadians throw away 3.3 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, according to the foundation, and out of that 2.8 million tonnes heads to the landfill.
“Those numbers are staggering and completely unacceptable, said Dubois.
Dubois called the government’s announcement “historical” and is optimistic it will provide an action plan soon. However, she would like to see other forms of marine waste addressed, such as the derelict fishing gear, as well as a plan for single-use alternatives.
She noted that lot of the compostable alternatives do not decompose. Some contain a plastic resin, which perpetuates the micro plastic problem.
ticrawford@postmedia.com