Environment Committee on April 10th, 2019

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I am reminded of an expression that we sometimes utilize in question period: “If you're in a hole, stop digging.” If for every man, woman and child on this planet right now there's a tonne of plastic, we've been digging. Of all the plastic ever produced, 50% has been produced in the last 18 years. Take that in for a moment. If you have an 18-year-old child, half of all the plastics ever produced in the history of the world happened within that child's lifetime.

I think it's wise for you to call us to the higher order—do no harm; don't create the problem in the first place—and mesh that with your strategy to deal with the problem as we see it right now. There is so much plastic entering our environment that is treated as waste. I think that's a term we should perhaps consider striking from our lexicon. It's not waste. I consider waste something that has no use at all. It has ended its life in terms of utility, and we have to get rid of it. If we're throwing away, according to the industry itself, the value of $150 billion a year and we call it waste, we're not being very intelligent, on any level.

The part of the solution that I have offered up is to simply say that we're in this hole that keeps getting deeper; there have been industry initiatives here, here and here, yet at a global level, and certainly at a national level.... What's the responsibility of the federal government?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

As we've already pointed out, too, after 40 years' worth of recycling, we're recycling only 11%.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's right.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

It's not working. It's broken.

I would take it to the next level. Would industry agree to a mandatory target ensuring that 90% or 100% of all plastics are recyclable and recovered, say by 2030?

[Isabelle Des Chênes]

We've already committed to having all of our plastics—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's on the packaging side. I'm saying all plastics. As you said, packaging is 33%.

I would ask the bottlers the same question. Do you feel that achieving a mandatory level...? You're saying that 80% of bottle plastics are recyclable now. Would you agree to a mandatory level of 90% by 2030?

[Jim Goetz]

I can only speak for my industry and not all plastics, but I believe that we have a target set for our industry in every province. That has already been put there.

I would also say that, as for other jurisdictions that were discussed before, the EU's directive for a plastics ban set a collection target for beverage containers of 77% by 2025, and in Canada we're at 75% already.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Would you have a problem with a mandatory target to ensure that we actually meet those targets, rather than making it voluntary?

[Jim Goetz]

As I just said, we have targets in almost every province.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Are they to reach 90%?

[Jim Goetz]

No, right now they're generally between 75% and 80%.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'm asking if you would have a problem with a mandatory target of 90%.

[Jim Goetz]

We're already on our way. Of course, the EU set a 90% target for 2029. We can certainly have a conversation about targets, but just for the record, the beverage industry specifically has targets in place in almost every province.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

To the plastics sector, would you have a problem with there being mandatory targets? I know you're saying aspirationally that you want to get there, but we're seeing that the voluntary targets aren't working. Do we move to a mandatory system to try to achieve those targets?

[Bob Masterson]

Some part of it is the same answer as Mr. Goetz'. Some of the provinces do have targets. It depends on the specifics of that policy, but the commitment is there from industry.

I do want to answer your question, though, about the different types of plastics. There are a lot of different plastics. It is a ubiquitous material for many good reasons, its design features and otherwise. Here's an example. There is an amazing amount of plastic material in a wind turbine. The good thing about a wind turbine is that it's meant to be very durable and withstand a strong wind—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'm sorry to cut you off, but I have one quick final point. Would you be okay, then, if we prohibit all plastics that aren't recyclable by a certain date, by 2030?

[Bob Masterson]

I'm sure there would be problems with that in some applications. You have to be cautious and look at the exceptions.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Once again, the only way you're going to drive innovation is to put industry on notice and have it so that 100% of the plastics are recyclable by 2030.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

If you would you like to respond, I'm happy to allow it.

[Bob Masterson]

I would just say that you have the industry's commitment on plastic packaging. You talk about single-use plastics and the concerns of Canadians. You have our commitment to work with you on that. Let's get success on that and see what more can come after that, but I think that lumping all plastics together would make for a very difficult conversation when you get into automotive, building materials, medical applications and others. These are very different materials, depending on the application.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

Mr. Jeneroux, you have six minutes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll just take a short bit of that six minutes and perhaps give the rest of it to my colleague here and share the time.

I appreciate your comments and I thank you, everybody, for taking the time out of your very busy days to join us.

I particularly want to pick up on a comment about plastic straws.

I appreciate you comments, Mr. Cullen. I don't think every paper straw is created equal at this point. There are certainly some that seem to stand up to that single use—I'm not packing them in my pocket here—better than others. I'm wondering if any of you are aware—and I know it might get a little bit out of your personal jurisdiction—of an economic analysis that has been done on the changes from plastic to paper straws. I'm certainly not opposed to drinking out of a paper straw if it's guaranteed to work and doesn't melt in the glass. I'm just curious if there is something you can point the committee to that we can use as an economic base or standard when taking these decisions into account, particularly from the industry side. I think of what this may mean to Restaurants Canada.

It's a question for everybody or anybody.

[Bob Masterson]

I can't speak to straws specifically, but on the question of so-called single-use plastics or plastics in consumer goods, work was done by our industry with the support of the United Nations in 2016, and updated last year. It was done by Trucost. What it said was that there are replacements for many of the plastics that are of concern, including those top 10 in the European Union, but when you look at the alternatives, the environmental and economic costs will be over $400 billion, four times as much for those alternative materials.

That comes back to our point: We have to be cautious when solving a problem that we don't simply replace it with a bigger problem. There will be applications where perhaps aluminum is equivalent, but perhaps aluminum is also much more expensive. You need to look at the picture as holistically as you can before simply making a ban on one material without thinking of the consequences of how consumers and industry will replace that with alternative materials. What are the implications of that? That is in our report, and the references are there if you wish to dig deeper.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Does anybody else want to comment?

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I think it's an important question to ask, whenever we're looking to ban or replace something. What are the practical implications? What's the impact on the economy and jobs? A report just this week cited the figure that every tonne of plastic that ends up wasted costs $33,000 to marine industries, tourism sectors, the municipalities. It's one of those questions you probably had from citizens who may look at their tax bill and say, “It's costing me $6 a month for recycling. Why am I paying more in my tax bill?”

Particularly if you can take $6 off your municipal waste cost for the diversion out of your landfill.... Anyone who wants to see large numbers should talk to a municipal leader when they're having to plan a new landfill. What is the cost of retiring the old one? I would always put these questions. A proper approach I think is full cost accounting, not simply the one moment in time, but the life cycle cost of anything we're talking about, the current product or the replacement we're considering.

If we just take the cost of a paper straw to produce and the cost of a plastic straw to produce and one is 3¢ and the other is 1¢, we say that clearly we should do the cheaper option. My question would be, what does it cost for the entire life of that straw? That's all. I've seen industry move dramatically in the last 15 years from a place of maybe not considering full cost to a place now where the implications are better understood. The analysis should be done completely—not in the one moment of time in which you put that straw into the cup—and then we should decide what the cost actually is.