Thank you, Mark.
Thank you, Chair, and honourable members, for having us here.
My name is Vito Buonsante. I work for Environmental Defence Canada, a charity that aims to change policy at the government level to protect the environment. We're also a member of the Green Budget Coalition. Through the coalition we provide recommendations every year to the Canadian government to improve its budget. Also, this year we did provide some recommendations related to funding around plastic. Unfortunately, there probably wasn't a significant commitment around plastics.
Instead, Canada keeps on making commitments that increase the amount of plastics that we produce, that we use and that end up in the environment, by subsidizing the oil and plastics industries in many ways, at both the federal and provincial levels. Taxpayers bear the costs of poor design choices by producers and retailers, meaning that at the end of life of these products, the producers don't bear the costs and are not responsible for what happens to the products they design. There has been a failure to appropriately price waste disposal, and so in some cases it is easier for waste managers to throw plastic waste in landfills rather than recycle it.
We see that the demand for plastics keeps on growing. Canada is one of the countries, according to a study by the International Energy Agency, with the biggest demand for plastics per capita, at 99.6 kilograms per person in 2015. That is much more, 38 kilograms more, than what is estimated for western Europe.
Because of this growing concern around plastics, my organization, Environmental Defence, has spearheaded a list of policy demands aimed at solving the plastic pollution problem. It's a declaration called Towards a Zero Plastic Waste Canada and it was signed by 43 environmental organizations throughout Canada.
I'd like to highlight a few of the measures we suggest that are consistent with the idea of reducing the amount of plastic. They are as follows: one, harmonize provincial recycling targets to ensure that 100% of single-use plastics, at a minimum, is captured and that at least 85% is recycled; two, establish recycled content standards for single-use plastics; and, three, declare problematic plastics toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act already has recognized microbeads as being toxic and has already started reducing them. To this end, Environmental Defence and nine other groups have asked the Canadian government to include single-use plastics and microplastics in the list of toxic substances, but unfortunately, although our request was submitted in June 2018 and the minister has only 90 more days to respond, so far we have not had any response. That would make a big difference, because when a product or a substance is declared toxic under CEPA, the government has to put in place some reduction measures, and reduction is certainly what we need.
We are hopeful because of a meeting last month at the UN level. The UN Environment Assembly came out with a ministerial declaration calling for every country to reduce its single-use plastics by 2030. It's a voluntary agreement, but we hope that also through this study that you are pushing here, commitments can be made at the federal level to actually put in place policies that will reduce single-use plastic. I'm happy to talk further to what those policies can be.
Thank you very much.