Many retail companies have recently made and/or announced efforts to reduce the amount of plastics and packaging in their operations. These include removing excessive packaging, removing difficult-to-recycle materials, increasing post-consumer recycled content, ensuring and encouraging use of recyclable packaging materials, reducing packaging for e-commerce specific items, plastic shopping and grocery bag reduction initiatives, providing better for the environment alternatives to single-use plastics, and they also allow customers to shop with reusable containers.
Some retail companies in Canada are also collaborating with consumer goods manufacturers and civil society organizations and the Circular Economy Leadership Coalition to find ways to better utilize, reduce and replace plastic materials.
Regarding single-use plastic bans, we see them as only one tool within the toolbox. A ban on single-use plastic is only effective in reducing plastic waste where the replacement item is better for the environment. For example, the City of Vancouver reports that 65% of plastic single-use checkout bags were used for household waste. When plastic bag bans are instituted, the sale of plastic bags intended for household waste typically increases twofold.
We would support a ban on plastic bags if it were implemented in a harmonized way, with harmonization in mind across many jurisdictions, to avoid a patchwork.
We do not support bans if no suitable or feasible alternative materials are available.
Our recommendations are to ensure replacement materials are both available and have a smaller impact on the environment and ensure bans are harmonized across multiple jurisdictions to decrease consumer confusion and burden to businesses.