Environment Committee on April 10th, 2019

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

How about first-time use? There is a White Spot straw.

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

Some of those other straws are meant for one-time use.

Six states in Australia have banned plastic bags. In India, more than half of the country's 29 states have aimed legislation at single-use plastics. Taiwan has already had a 12-year ban on single-use plastics in place.

Jurisdictions have done it. People have acclimatized. Industry has moved in different directions.

I agree. The mechanism I'm using in my bill is CEPA, so it has to be a science-based decision in order to list types of plastics that we no longer want in the economy. I think it should be evidence-based. I think it should be science-based.

I suppose one hopeful thing about Canada being a laggard is that we have many countries that have gone out in front of us on a number of these issues and have tried and sometimes failed but sometimes succeeded. I would hesitate for Canada to think we have to reinvent that wheel, because we simply don't.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

To the Chemistry Industry Association, what do you think your association's and your industry's role should be in the full spectrum of producing, reusing, recycling and recovering, in terms of funding those initiatives?

[Bob Masterson]

There are two parts, I think.

The first is entirely within our realm of control, and that's design of the materials to be recycled in the first place. Certainly, there is a role. We think things like the superclusters, the strategic innovation fund or the federal government's SDTC can play a really strong role in bringing people together. Ultimately, the research and development of new materials and new products will be funded entirely by industry, because they'll benefit from it at the end of the day.

The second part—and I would encourage you to raise the question with Mr. Goetz—is really about extended producer responsibility. What role do the people who put those products into the market, the products that end up in your blue box, play in funding? I think what you see in jurisdictions like British Columbia is that industry says that they're happy to take 100% of the costs of the blue box recovery program, provided they have 100% control of how it operates. We do not have that in many jurisdictions.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

You don't necessarily feel responsibility for the full life cycle of plastics, then, in terms of providing funding.

[Jim Goetz]

Bob is right to bring up various provinces. It's not very well known that across the country, at various rates, industry is paying for that extended producer responsibility already.

That includes Ontario, for example, where industry pays 50% of the blue box cost, which is shared with municipalities in more of a partnership. In British Columbia, industry pays 100% of that. Our beverage programs are funded. They're large programs and have to be funded. The away-from-home consumption or use of plastics—which is something we're very interested in—gets very expensive. About 30% of our products are consumed on the go, where you buy at a convenience store and walk down the street.

To Bob's point, industries that are involved in single-use plastics support the concept of extended producer responsibility. It means that. It doesn't mean just the costs; it means the responsibility for it as well, such as the control of the system and the design of the system. Governments should set targets, but then allow industry to figure out the best way and the most economic way to get to those end goals.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Please answer quickly.

[Isabelle Des Chênes]

I have a small addition as well. Some of our members are also investing in pilot programs to help build collection capacity and help introduce new technologies like pyrolysis and chemical recycling. I believe you'll hear from Dow in the next couple of weeks. They have a program in the States that they will also initiate as a pilot here in Canada in the next few months. It's called the Hefty EnergyBag program, and it allows consumers to place their difficult-to-recycle plastics in an orange bag. It gets brought to the MRF and it's processed through a facility that allows pyrolysis. It can then be converted into biodiesels and synthetic fuels.

They're investing in those pilot programs to really help communities understand the potential of these kinds of technologies attached to their collection systems. We also have a number of small chemical recycling companies. GreenMantra was mentioned earlier. Companies like Pyrowave are working with industry to try to develop technologies that will—for instance, in the case of polystyrene—really convert those products that don't have to be cleaned back to their original molecules, so that you can then have 100% recycled polystyrene products.

There's a lot of investment and innovation at this point.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Perfect, thank you.

We are now going to move over to Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to our guests today.

I want to start with Mr. Ross. You used the line “plastic is everywhere”. We do our community cleanups as MPs on the east coast. My riding is Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

We can collect tons and tons of plastic, and we can go back several weeks later and do the same thing over again. I'm guilty of thinking of plastic as that big piece of ghost fishing gear or a big rubber boot that gets eaten by a whale, but it's really telling when you speak about plankton eating microplastics at one end of the food chain.

Ghost fishing gear is a major issue on all of our coasts. You're probably aware of the pilot project that the Government of Canada has with Nova Scotia through the Nova Scotia fisheries fund to study the effectiveness and practicality of ropeless fishing gear technology for the commercial lobster industry. That seems to me like major innovation, a major opportunity for jobs and innovation to reduce plastics from the beginning.

You work with industry. I'm interested in your thoughts on what the federal government could do to reduce plastics in commercial fishing.

[Peter Ross]

Hello to the east coast of Canada, one of our three very important coastlines. The billions and billions of dollars in terms of natural resources and commercial, sport, recreational and indigenous fisheries are something we want to protect.

The first point I would make in response to your line of questioning is that, once plastics are released into the ocean or into the environment, the genie has been let out of the bottle. We all do the right things, as you do—and thank you for doing so—in cleaning up where we can. That is an important activity; it does clean up a small amount. It generates data, and it gives us a direct channel of communication to Canadians. For example, last year we had more than 60,000 Canadian volunteers cleaning up more than 3,000 kilometres of shoreline.

That's important in terms of education and data collection. It does—you said it yourself—cosmetic justice to the big issue out there, and that speaks to the need to turn off the tap at the source to prevent these things from getting into the ocean. These huge ocean cleanups are worth exploring, but they're never going to address the problem. We really have to turn off the tap at the front end, and that's understanding where these things are coming from.

Of course, there are many different sources of plastics in the ocean. You mentioned the fishing sector's plastic: polypropylene nets, polyethylene pipes, tubes, lines, ropes, fishing gear of all shapes and sizes, often made largely of plastic. There are best practices on board vessels in terms of fishing as well as design, like the use of hemp, for example, as an alternative to polypropylene, and cleaning up of derelict fishing gear.

This is one example of macroplastic, large plastic items, that is really worth looking at. Derelict fishing gear is killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds, turtles, fish and marine mammals every single year—that's the ghost gear. There are really good programs in other parts of the world, and we're just starting to look down that pathway in Canada. I think that's very important to address.

Another point I would make is that, when we see a plastic bottle, a plastic bag, a net or a bottle cap on the beach, we can either clean that up or leave it there. My example is used to illustrate the life cycle of that item. If we choose not to clean up that plastic bag, it's going to be here five, 10, 50 or 100 years from now. It may not be intact, but chemically it's still going to be out there, because plastic is basically geological material. It's not going to degrade chemically; it's going to degrade physically into smaller and smaller bits of microplastics, translating that risk from charismatic creatures down into the zooplankton.

I think you touched on a number of points that are really worth taking home, and it really speaks to the need for better design and better practices in the field, certainly continued cleanup and investment in innovation and discovery that help us create a forward-looking, practical solution or a set of solutions that will help protect the Canadian economy.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Ross.

I know we only have a minute. Mr. Goetz, you say you collect 75% of single-use beverage containers, or is it all beverage containers, including ones with a deposit?

[Jim Goetz]

The 75% is a Canadian average across all jurisdictions. The data is kept at the provincial level, so that's on average across all of the provinces. That includes deposit and non-deposit jurisdictions.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Do you have a breakdown? Is the majority of that the deposit containers? I assume it is.

[Jim Goetz]

Well, not necessarily. We have blue box jurisdictions that are reaching the same levels as deposit jurisdictions. The main issue right now for data in Ontario—which someone mentioned earlier—is that each blue box program, for example, is controlled at the municipal level, so you literally have a couple of hundred different programs. There's no real provincial clearing house for that data, although we have gone out in the field and done waste audits through an organization called Stewardship Ontario.

I should mention that the province is now in the process of changing that, and we expect to be able to get better data. But as of right now, according to the recycling affiliates in each of the provinces, not just from us, the average rate across the country is 75% for PET bottles. It's even higher for other materials.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

You're out of time.

Mr. Godin.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today. We're studying an important topic, and I think that we're all aware of the need for action. You're experts and we're parliamentarians. I'm counting on you to help us prepare a good report.

My first question is for you, Mr. Ross. In your presentation, you spoke about the importance of educating consumers. You said that people are waiting to take action. Can you elaborate on this attitude of Canadians?

[Peter Ross]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

I'm very pleased with your question, because it emphasizes the importance and relevance of starting a national discussion on what must be done, particularly with regard to consumption, product choices or recycling.

To advance the debate on plastics, which permeate our lives, we must move beyond simply discussing them with individuals or the general public. There are options, but consumers lack choices and don't know enough to make good decisions at the store, at work or at home. We must establish grounds for discussion to help Canadians make responsible choices. We must also take the opportunity to speak with private sector companies so that the companies can develop proper products to sell to Canadians and inform Canadians of the choices available to them. This is done on several levels.

Lastly, plastic pollution presents a challenge for everyone involved in this issue in Canada. Canadians are waiting for us to help them. We have the opportunity to establish leadership and a discussion at the national level. It all starts with education.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Ross. I think that you're absolutely right. The window is there and people are beginning to show interest. We saw how companies and consumers reacted to plastic straws. This may not have a major impact on the environment, but it's a concrete step. It's a great opportunity.

I'll now turn to the representative of the Canadian Beverage Association.

Mr. Goetz, you said something interesting. How would the industry react and what solutions would it put forward if, tomorrow morning, Canadian consumers decide to stop buying water, soft drinks or other products sold in plastic containers?

[Jim Goetz]

I would say that, of course, as with all consumer packaged goods, we are at the will of the consumer. We buy and sell things in the marketplace, and that's what we do.

I would point out, however, that the move—not only in the beverage industry but in other companies and industries for consumer packaged goods—has been done for a reason. Although there are some great glass products out in the market and many of our members put out some of their products in glass, there's a reason that the industry moved away from glass, to a certain degree, many years ago. A lot of that has to do with environmental outcomes.

For example, for a majority of the manufacturers in Canada that use PET bottles for their products, the actual PET bottle arrives at the factory and is about this big. They use what they call blow mould technology at the facility, where the bottle is blown up. It's not trucked there like that. Just doing the simple math on the size, a lot more of those bottles can be put in one truck, as opposed to being put in five or six trucks, which dramatically lowers greenhouse gas emissions. For one bottle of the small tubes.... I think you would need about seven or eight trucks if those bottles were completely filled up. There's also a weight issue that affects greenhouse gas emissions as well.

The final thing I would say is that PET is a valuable resource when recycled. When we look at our blue box programs across Canada, we see that PET and aluminum are two of the most valued commodities. There is a lot of material that goes in the blue box that's not worth a lot in the open market, into the circular economy. Aluminum and PET are worth money. Where municipalities run the blue box system—in Toronto, for example—they keep that money from the sale of the commodities.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Goetz. I need further information and I'm running out of time.

I was just thinking about aluminum bottles. This could be a solution, and Canada is a major aluminum producer. Could aluminum bottles replace plastic bottles?

[Jim Goetz]

Absolutely. The beverage industry is still heavily involved in aluminum packaging, which is, again, highly recyclable.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Goetz.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

Mr. Bossio.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for your presentations.

I have to say that I'm actually very disturbed by the discourse so far in this discussion. Everything has been focused on recycling, and we all know that the three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—start with “reduce”. I'd actually like to see a change to “reduce, repair, reuse and upcycle”. As long as we keep defaulting to recycle, we always think of downcycle, whereas if you think of upcycle, you're actually thinking of adding value, so that the product you're trying to recycle has a value that will incentivize people to take care of the product at the end of its life.

As I said, reducing has to be one of the chief goals here. The reason PET is so valuable is that the market keeps expanding infinitely. Therefore, the more you can get back, the better it is for your bottom line. I'm not trying to say that your bottom line isn't important, but reductions are vitally important.

The other concern I have—which hasn't been discussed but it was brought up by a previous witness, Dr. Liboiron from Memorial University—is that plastics actually have toxins that cling to them as they break down. This has always been a big fight I've had with the chemical industry and chemical management planning. We don't look at bioaccumulation. We look at the chemical in and of itself, as separate from that impact of bioaccumulation.

Mr. Cullen, do you not agree that reduction is really where we have to get to here, when it comes to plastics? That's how we'll actually solve the plastics problem in the future.