Thank you very much.
You'll see on the agenda what I hope to go through with you today, including how we perceive the problem and the areas we will be focusing on, through the five working groups. I will close with some opportunities, which I hope the federal government will take seriously and engage in with us at the National Zero Waste Council.
Slide 3, which says “too much garbage” at the top, shows that in the 2013 report released by the Conference Board of Canada, Canada ranked below our 17 peers in terms of waste generation. That really is the crux of our problem. Our local governments across Canada spend close to $3 billion annually to deal with our waste. These are taxpayers' dollars that, at a time when we have major infrastructure gaps that we need to address—such as waste water, transit, and housing affordability—could be, I think, better spent and redirected to those issues if we would be more efficient in terms of our waste generation and our waste management.
Slide 4 highlights the costs to us and pays attention to not just the cost but the environmental issues. We are generating too much waste. Managing our waste involves not only the environmental issues at the front end but also the upstream impacts. A third of the greenhouse gas emissions that we create, which do such things as raising our sea levels, come from industry and agriculture. Now, both of these are important, and we need the products that industry makes and farmers provide for us, but, of course, in certain instances, and through experience.... The UN food agency, for instance, put out a report in 2013 that shows about a third of our food is thrown away. This food never ends up on our plates. If we can eliminate this food waste, that means that about a third of the water we expend to produce that food, a third of the fertilizer, a third of the transportation costs, and so on can be saved, and those energies and monies can be redirected elsewhere again.
The same argument can be made for industry. We produce a number of products that provide good service to us. But, of course, they wear out too quickly; they're expensive to repair; and in many cases they cannot be repaired. They all end up in the garbage dump, but that's not the end of the story. Oftentimes that is the end of the story for consumers, but at the municipal level, we know about the energy that goes into producing these products, whether it be mining for the resources, manufacturing the product, distributing it, or retailing it. All that disappears from the value equation and instead there is a cost item for the local municipalities as we need to deal with that waste.
The next slide says, “toward a circular economy”. To address this problem, we need to internalize the costs of waste generation at the production phase; we need to educate the marketplace about the costs of this; and we need to make better and more effective choices. We need to get at the root cause and prevent waste from being generated in the first place. We need to move away from what we have now, which is a linear economy, in which we extract resources to produce the products, we distribute them, and then we end up having the situation I previously described. This is all done without any incentive to consider the garbage that is generated at the end of that process.
Instead, we need to shift to a more efficient economy, which is a circular economy, in which products are better designed and can be repaired, recycled, and reused at what appears to be the end of their useful life. Through a circular economy, we hope that waste will be reduced at all stages of the supply chain.
Slide 6 says, “prevention is better than cure”. Changes of this magnitude are, frankly, largely out of the control of local governments. That's the reason for the building of this national organization, in collaboration with the FCM and Metro Vancouver. But even nationally, this challenge is daunting because of the international nature of economies around the world. Thankfully, we find that we're not alone. For instance, the British government recently released a policy paper, “Prevention is better than cure: The role of waste prevention in moving to a more resource efficient economy”. You'll see the ministerial forward. I won't read it to you, but you can refer to it.
The next slide on the World Economic Forum shows that, again, as I stated earlier, we're not in this alone. The World Economic Forum makes the same point that it is to our advantage to move to a circular economy. It states:
Linear consumption is reaching its limits. A circular economy has benefits.... This is a trillion-dollar opportunity, with huge potential for innovation, job creation and economic growth.
The next slide shows our National Zero Waste Council's vision and mission. I'll just read the vision to you: “Canada united in the achievement of zero waste, now and for future generations.” I would highlight the words “future generations”. Our mission is to “act collaboratively” with all sectors and find common ground that heads towards our goals.
The next slide is on strategic directions. Our council is currently working on two strategic directions: catalyzing change in the design of products and packaging to allow them to be more easily reused, recovered, and recycled, and promoting behaviour change amongst the sectors of society, with the goal of reducing the amount of waste entering the waste stream.
The next slide shows our governance structure. We have a chair; a vice-chair; a management board; a collaboration board; five working groups; a secretariat, which Metro Vancouver is currently; and our members, which are wide and diverse. It is a multi-stakeholder council, with groups such as the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, the Canadian Stewardship Services Alliance, and the prestigious Cradle to Cradle institute from California. We hope to continue to grow that list. That's part of the reason why we're here today talking to you.
The next slide is on priority areas. The council has three priority areas: building public awareness, policy harmonization, and knowledge exchange.
We also have five working groups. I'll go through them briefly for you. The next slide is on working groups, as shown on page 12. First is a national communications campaign group aimed at strengthening public awareness. Again, there is additional language there, but I'll leave it to you to go through the more specific language of these various working groups.
The next slide, slide 13, is on the working group on food waste. A food working group is looking at opportunities for policy harmonization that could best keep food out of our garbage and bring forward measures driven on a Canada-wide scale, including advancing federal and provincial tax incentives for food donations.
Slide 14 is on the product and packaging design group, which is aiming to increase the understanding of barriers that stand in the way of reducing packaging waste and also to increase the recovery of packaging materials. This includes identifying and addressing the technical, regulatory, and behavioural impediments. Of particular note, we're looking for policy harmonization Canada-wide.
The next slide is on the circular economy. We touched on that earlier.