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.