Environment Committee on May 1st, 2019

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

How do we reduce and eliminate microplastic, or can we? Are we stuck with it? If we're stuck with it, how do we mitigate it?

[Chelsea Rochman]

I think it's a good question.

I will say again that I think that anything we do that eliminates plastic waste and plastic pollution will help reduce microplastics. We also should recognize that there will be microplastics going into the environment by the nature of the wear and tear in using the materials. As we drive our tires down the road, our tires break down into little bits. We sometimes find 30 pieces of tire rubber in one litre of stormwater that we collect on the road and microplastics in the dust from our textiles.

When we think about mitigation, the ways that we can reduce the microplastics going into our waterways are bioretention cells on storm drains. We see a 92% reduction in particles with those. Filters on washing machines reduce microfibres by about 90% going into the waste-water treatment plant.

There are strategies that are microplastic specific, in addition to thinking about the plastic waste strategies that also help with microplastics.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Now we're going back to Mr. Fast.

If Madame Boucher has any questions as well, feel free to jump in.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I believe I heard Mr. Valiante mention the highly integrated nature of both the oil production and plastic production sectors. That implies a conflict of interest if we're looking at reducing the usage of plastic.

Is that how you gentlemen see that? Obviously, a company that produces oil wants to produce more oil. A preference would be to produce virgin plastics rather than recycled plastics.

How does your industry get past that, because you are in the business of making plastic but you are also integrated with the oil production sector?

[Michael Burt]

That's a good question.

From Dow's perspective, we take ethane and turn it into polyethylene, so we're fairly agnostic as to where the ethane comes from. However, it is a by-product of natural gas production. In Europe, they crack naphtha, which is a by-product of oil production.

The reality is that with advanced chemical recycling, you have an opportunity to get into a feedstock that is readily available. As I said, we like to see waste plastic not really treated as a waste but as a resource.

The global consumption of plastic exceeds GDP every year. We don't see that waning at all in the future. We're not advocating any major increases in the use of plastic or any major reduction in the use of plastic. That's just the reality of the economics that we have around the globe right now. Most of the plastic growth is in the developing countries.

The attributes that plastic have are that it is inexpensive to produce, long-lasting, highly flexible in its applications and it makes life much easier when it comes to handling products. We don't see that reducing. As to projections that have been commented on by a couple of other speakers, we only see plastic utilization going up.

The way to reconcile that with the impact on the environment is that you're going to have to increase substantially—hopefully, to 100%—the amount of plastic that gets recycled.

I don't really see a catch-22 or a conflict between oil and gas operations and petrochemical operations. As peak oil production stabilizes and begins to reduce, you will probably still have quite a bit of it going to plastic manufacturing. That, in conjunction with the amount of raw material feedstock that you would get from the recycled plastic, whether it's flake from mechanical recycling or the monomers that we get when we do chemical recycling, I think will balance out at the end of the day.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Earlier you touched upon extended producer responsibility. You didn't get into it in great detail.

I would be interested in how you, as representatives of industry, see this working out. I sense that there was some passive approval of the concept, but you were concerned how it would be rolled out.

What would be your major concerns as EPR is implemented?

[Michael Burt]

Well, the major concern is the price that the producer would have.

My company doesn't make the plastic water bottles; we make resin. We make little plastic pellets that we then sell to converters who turn it into the everyday products that people see around the world.

The reality is that price per tonne is not unknown to Dow or to any of the resin producers around the world. It's talked about everywhere. The EU is actively looking at it.

I indicated earlier that the devil is in the details. What is price per tonne? Is that cost transferred on? Who collects the money? What happens to the money? Does it go into general revenue for the government? Is it used to help enhance some of the recycling that we've talked about from a chemical recycling aspect? Is it paid back to individuals who collect waste plastic bags to be turned over to the mechanical or chemical recycling facilities?

We're in favour of it as long as it's balanced out, in that all of the funds are not going to one entity that's not using it to really tackle the problem at the end of the day.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Valiante, I think it was you who suggested that recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, which is why recycling doesn't happen at the rate we'd like to see it happen. That's a hurdle that has to be overcome. Do you have any suggestions on how we do that?

[Usman Valiante]

Certainly when you start creating high requirements for recycling and the scale starts to increase, your unit costs start to come down, the technologies get more sophisticated and you get more innovation—first in how to recycle it and then in how to bring the cost of recycling down. You're going to get scale efficiencies and you're going to get scale efficiencies in collection.

I think Michael just raised a good point. We shouldn't be taxing plastics and using that to pay someone else to recycle it. Producers should actually operate the collection system so they can optimize that system. They're spending their own money to create organizations that collect this material and then direct it to their recycling partners, which are these recycling facilities. Then they'll start to get the scale that we need. When they start taking three million metric tons and putting it into the recycling system, they'll start to bring those costs down and make them competitive.

There's going to be a hurdle we need to get over. That hurdle really is only going to be overcome when the producers start to reconfigure the recycling system and scale it up.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Burt, do you want to respond to that?

[Michael Burt]

No. I agree with what he said.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Perfect. Thanks.

Mr. Bossio, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, all, for being here. This has been a very interesting conversation.

I'd like to start with Mr. Burt. Do you believe in the three Rs—the first one being reduce?

[Michael Burt]

Of course.

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

How do you see that reduction working then, if we're not going to seriously tackle some of the Rs? You made some valid points on single-use plastics. There are some that it doesn't make sense to eliminate as long as you can recycle them, but there are some that I think should be banned.

How would you respond to that?

[Michael Burt]

That's a good question.

There are some products that are probably over-utilized. You need to look at a real life-cycle analysis. If you want to remove the plastic bags or straws and you're going to replace them with something else, what you're replacing them with can be, and usually is, substantially more energy intensive.

You have to reuse a nylon bag—which, incidentally, is made of plastic as well—1,000 times to equal the same environmental footprint as one single-use plastic bag. There has to be a balance in place. I mean, if you—

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

If you're looking to change behaviour and how some people act.... I can't remember the last time I drank out of a plastic bottle. I can't remember the last time I used a paper cup, a plastic lid or a plastic straw. There are ways to get around using those particular products, but if you don't put a ban in place to change people's behaviour and try to address how they consume, then you're never going to solve that particular problem.

I'd like to give Chelsea Rochman an opportunity to comment on that. I'm not someone who is totally opposed to extended producer responsibility and trying to maximize the amount of plastics that we're recycling and all the rest of it, but the first R is reduce. The second one is reuse. The third one shouldn't be recycle; it should be upcycle. We need to think about these things differently.

I'd like to give you an opportunity to comment on that.

[Chelsea Rochman]

We have an outreach program where we go out in the community and do cleanups on the coastline or at the mouths of rivers. The majority of what we see—the top items—are a lot of the items that you just said you can't remember the last time you used them. These items are being used and then somehow making their way to being some of the top items that we see in nature.

I agree with you one hundred per cent about the three Rs and the hierarchy. I think that there are products that we wouldn't need to replace. We could just reduce them and have people get used to this idea that they don't need them.

Of course there are situations where there is a need for a straw, but you only have them when there's a need and you're still reducing a large amount of what we use. I completely agree with you. I think by reducing a lot of those materials we could clean up a lot of the litter we see on our coastlines.

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

I'd like to give Mr. Sandborn and Mr. Valiante an opportunity. Mr. Valiante—since you're here—I know that the circular economy is definitely an important aspect of this, but once again, would you agree that we have to focus on the hierarchy of the three Rs?

Actually, I would like to see a change to reduce, repair, reuse and upcycle, rather than the way we currently think about them.

[Usman Valiante]

Certainly all of those Rs are legitimate strategies to address the problem. As a first step, I'd like to get the parties responsible for that to pay the full cost so they can pick the right R for the right solution. Maybe I should reuse this. Maybe I shouldn't use this plastic at all. Maybe I should redesign the product.

These Rs become a strategy once you've said you can't pollute for free anymore. You can't just dispose of this stuff; you have to take it back and recycle it. That poses a cost, and that cost then induces a decision-making process. I've seen it happen: Where I want to avoid this cost, I think I might have to redesign this, change it or something else.

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

But just as we see in dealing with other areas, you need to combine a number of measures. There's no silver bullet that's going to solve the issue completely.

Mr. Sandborn, could you comment as well?

I don't know how much time I have left.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

You have just over a minute.

[Calvin Sandborn]

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.

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

I'd like to give you an opportunity to speak about greenwashing and the need to eliminate it, which you mentioned earlier. Do you have any solutions in mind to deal with that specifically?

[Calvin Sandborn]

I think the Competition Act needs to be reconsidered and include very strong prohibitions on misleading advertising about the environmental qualities of products. I think that is happening across the board with products. Corporations have figured out that consumers are reluctant to buy things they think might be environmentally harmful, and yet you have corporations that are selling products that oftentimes are inherently environmentally harmful, and so they fudge the truth. The Competition Act needs to be changed so that when a corporation does that, the Competition Bureau steps in and says, “Wait a minute, we're going to make you retract that misleading advertising that is causing people to waste”—in this case plastics—“and create all these destructive wastes”.