In the gun that we need is the question of price. Currently what happens is that plastics are too cheap. It's been mentioned so often that these are cheap, and that's why they proliferate. Why are they cheap? Part of it is the multi-billions of dollars of government subsidies that go to the oil and gas industry. In the next week our centre, the Environmental Law Centre, is publishing a report daylighting the billions of dollars the oil and gas industry receive. That's one thing: We should eliminate those subsidies.
The second thing that gives you that distorted price signal, where it's so cheap that everybody wastes it, is that we haven't applied the polluter pays principle. People have been able to produce these products, make billions of dollars in profits from them, and then not take responsibility. It's been the taxpayer who's been dealing with the waste. It's been Mother Nature that's paid the cost of that waste being disposed of. We need to get rid of the subsidies. In our paper we talk about how the federal government can play a role in changing the price and giving a proper price signal here.