Environment Committee on May 6th, 2019

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I understand the harmonization dynamic between the north and the south, with the United States. However, Ms. Dionne raised a European issue and the potential of closer collaboration with Europe. As we have signed a new economic and trade agreement with Europe, it seems to me we should think about standards—as Mr. Brooks just said—that were established in Europe.

[Geneviève Dionne]

To follow up on Mr. Cantin's comments, I would say that we should consider North America and Europe. You are talking about free trade. However, it is certain that our products can be exported to Europe. So they should meet the requirements of the European Commission, which has taken circular economy and the issue of plastics and single-use products seriously. I think that it is important to have the same objectives, but that the means to achieving them can vary.

Could Canada use creativity and adapt the operationalization of those objectives or goals to give them a Canadian flavour? Yes, of course. However, I think it is important to align ourselves with the global context. These concerns require all stakeholders to think about a range of criteria. So it is important for all of us to be going in the same direction.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

It is very difficult to get there when there are so many players on the industrial side, both upstream and downstream, depending on where you are in the industrial chain.

We have already seen, in the past, difficulties in the management of issues on an intergovernmental level in Canada when an attempt to establish standards was made.

We've had major conflicts around the establishment of national standards, particularly on the issue of carbon emissions. Rather than going to the lowest common denominator, how do we get to the highest common denominator around national standards in Canada?

[Geneviève Dionne]

Like I was saying earlier, we can agree on the ultimate goal we want to achieve, such as a certain rate of recovery, recycling and integration of recycled content.

Various provinces must be given the opportunity and flexibility to implement mechanisms to achieve their objectives. That flexibility is necessary. Not one territory or province operates in the same way.

It is also important to respect what is already underway on the ground in terms of projects. I have mentioned a few initiatives we have undertaken in Quebec. We want to transfer that knowledge and expertise to other provinces and then enable them to adapt them to their territory if it is beneficial.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

My last question is for our friends at Environmental Defence.

Single-use plastics are often seized upon by the public as being the crucial issue. I can understand a plastic bag that's in the water or a straw that's lying on the ground, but from the testimony we've heard, they represent such a small, small percentage of the broader plastics issue. How do we get at solving the bigger issue of rendering our use of plastics much more efficiently while not forgetting the single-use question?

[Keith Brooks]

I think plastic packaging is about 40% of all the plastic used. Durable plastics, which go into automatic things or the shell of a computer or a phone, live much longer. They're much more likely to end up in a landfill and not in the environment. One of the major concerns people are having globally, and it's why they're acting on plastics, is this leakage into the environment, which we cannot deny is happening. A whale washes up on the beach practically every week now with a belly that's full of plastic. That's why people are targeting single-use plastics. It's because of the amount of leakage into the environment and because of the rate at which we're churning through this stuff in this linear economy.

I don't know if that answers your question, but I gather we're out of time anyway.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We may be able to come back to that in another round of questions, but Mr. Amos is out of time for now.

Mr. Fast, it's over to you for six minutes.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I will follow up on the question about the harmonization of standards, and also the recycling regimes across Canada. The challenge, of course, is that we may provide leadership at the federal level, but implementation at the provincial level is always the biggest challenge.

Mr. Downham, what kind of model do you see as being effective in allowing the federal leadership to translate down to the provincial and municipal levels? Is it sort of like what we have with the Canadian building code, where we provide the leadership but each province implements separately? Or is there another regime you would implement that would be effective in doing that?

[James D. Downham]

I can tell you what we're doing. I think it's a model for the future for us. Essentially, we started the packaging innovation gateway about four years ago. It was really all about helping brand owners take a new product and get it through the system, so that it went all the way through and into its next life. It was called the packaging innovation gateway.

It was a very informal process. We identified 15 problematic materials. It was all very nice. We had what I call “transparent collaboration”, where we had brand owners, retailers, package makers, waste management and municipalities—no provincial or federal representatives, but municipalities, because they're the primary folks who are handling and recovering the materials.

It was a very good process. The problem with it was that it wasn't collaboration; it was co-operation. We were able to bring everybody together, and they were saying that, yes, this is nice, but it was a lot of talk and no action.

We're taking it to the next level. We've modified the name to the “packaging innovation pathway”. We're starting with municipalities and with brand owners and we're going to put together a formal process whereby we can create a standard—I don't like to use the word “watchdog”—whereby we can certify packaging materials. We're going to talk about the circular economy. We'll talk about it in the circular context. A package may be a 360 or it maybe be a 270; it may be a 180 or a 90. The idea is to look at all of these packaging materials as they're coming through and we're going to give it that standard and assign it.

When a brand new product comes in and they walk in to see my friend Luc Lortie at Costco and say that it's the greenest, greatest product in the world made from bamboo or whatever, he has no clue what to do with it because he doesn't have the capability inside. He'll tell them to go and see the packaging innovation pathway, get it certified, bring it back to him, and then he'll buy it once he knows that there's a certification on it.

Our vision for this is a national body. It's a national initiative. Everybody is welcome to participate. We're forming right now. We've got our first meeting on May 17. We have the City of Toronto involved with it. We have municipalities. We've talked to Montreal. We're in discussions with Vancouver. We're talking to folks like Procter & Gamble and Molson Coors. That's where we're trying to take this thing.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

A number of you mentioned mechanical versus chemical recycling. I'm interested to hear from you the degree to which chemical recycling will change how we do recycling and how it will change the outcomes. For example, it used to be that not all plastics could be recycled mechanically. My understanding is that pretty well all plastics could be recycled if you deploy both mechanical and chemical recycling. Is that correct?

[Geneviève Dionne]

Yes.

Plastic is a material that behaves similarly to fibre packaging. A fibre gets shorter with every recycling cycle. So you start with one sheet of paper and turn it into a product with an increasingly short fibre, up to egg packaging, for example.

For plastic, the situation is the same, its fibres will get shorter with every cycle, once mechanical recycling has been initiated. There are limits, as we were saying earlier: mechanical recycling does not make it possible to eliminate ink and all the additives found in plastics.

In addition, certain forming processes—such as extrusion, though I do not want to get into technical details—mean that we are limited in terms of the material obtained at the end of this mechanical recycling process.

Molecular recycling makes it possible to go much further. Molecular recycling could be broken down into different things. We could go back all the way to the monomer, to the raw solution of the monomer plastic where polymer chains will be redone to remake them into plastics. Any inks or additives can be eliminated.

The interesting aspect of molecular recycling—we were talking about it as a complementary process—was that it can resolve the problem of any flexible packaging, any laminated and complex packaging containing amalgams of various types of resins.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Am I correct in assuming that because we now have molecular recycling as well as mechanical recycling, all plastics really could be recycled, which simplifies the recycling process for the consumer and for industry? If you're able to take any plastic, throw it into a recycling bin and get it off to the recycler and get it processed that way, it's a lot simpler than having to sort. I know there are a lot of Canadians who don't understand which plastics can be recycled and which can't. There are all kinds of rules related to it and they finally get frustrated and it all goes to the landfill.

In my mind, this should change that because it simplifies how the consumer gets to respond to recycling demands. Am I correct in saying that?

[Geneviève Dionne]

Absolutely.

In closing, I would say that molecular recycling opens the door to the recycling of other plastics outside the packaging industry. We are talking about plastics found in basic products such as children's toys, for example. There is not a lot of infrastructure currently to process those types of plastic products.

That simplifies Canadians' actions. The work will be done by the sorting and recycling industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I gave you an extra minute.

Wayne, I'll go to you.

Everybody has gone over by one minute, so I'll give you four minutes right now to start.

I'm sorry, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Look, we were already getting to the end.

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

Thank you for being with us today.

I'm assuming we're now at seven and a half minutes.

I want to take a different approach, perhaps, and I'll start with Madam Dionne.

You mentioned there are a number of things that make recycling plastic problematic, like colours, additives, etc. I also want to ask the industry witnesses the same question.

Is there a plastic that is currently the best plastic for recycling? Could you set standards around what goes into plastic so that you are can make sure it can be recycled easily?

[Geneviève Dionne]

I will try to answer you quickly, as I could say a million things on this topic.

We need to do more research to find out what is found in plastic packaging, as that information is not currently accessible.

Our French counterparts at Citeo are currently doing testing on opaque PET. They are trying to find out what mineral fillers and additives are added to it and see what is being done to that opaque PET once it has been collected to be able to recycle it.

This type of research to find out the composition of plastic is not done very much in Canada currently. So we need to work on that aspect to perhaps be able to develop types of standards and identify what additives give the necessary barrier properties to products sensitive to air, humidity and light. There are some very sensitive products that need those barrier properties, which could not be achieved with plastic alone, fibre, aluminum or glass. So we need to consider that aspect.

I would personally go a bit further. I am an industrial designer and have training in design. I think we also need to examine packaging design. There is a proliferation of single-use packaging and flexible packaging. I also think there may be a form of standardization—that's not the right term—that could be done in terms of design of certain types of packaging, while considering market segments, for example.

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

To the Packaging Consortium, Mr. Downham or Mr. Lantz, is there a best plastic that might be really boring because it doesn't have colour in it, doesn't have a bunch of things? Can we get to a standard that's better for recycling?

Second, in terms of packaging in general, we've said that the packaging that goes into vegetables can't be recycled at all, so could the industry instead switch to a plastic that could be recycled for vegetables, or use containers rather than throwaway plastics?

[Dan Lantz, Director, Sustainability, PAC Packaging Consortium]

There are advances being made all the time in plastics packaging. There are now laminated plastics out there that are compatible with polyethylene plastic recycling. In other words, those multi-laminated plastic pouches everybody loves to hate are now being made in multiple layers of a material with a barrier layer that's compatible, so it can go in with the plastic bags you're getting out of your grocery store.

The innovations are coming so fast from the packaging industry and from the likes of Dow and others that are creating these new things that by stepping back and saying let's ban things.... Polystyrene is a prime example.

There are three companies right in Canada, in Montreal, that are now taking polystyrene, EPS, and recycling it back down to the monomer level to create styrene that they can make back into polystyrene. By saying, “Oh you can't do that anymore”, what we're doing is stifling our own industry development. We're losing the opportunity to do something with all of this packaging.

If I were to choose a plastic, the ones that are most commonly recycled and worth the most and that you can do the most with, I would say it's clear plastic. I'm talking about clear as in having no colour in PET bottles and bottle grade, not thermoformed—not the things you get out of your bakery aisle. Those are very complicated to recycle.

HDPE natural, a milk jug, and polypropylene natural, so anything that's in.... It's almost white. It's semi-translucent in polypropylene. They tend to have the least amount of things in them, and you can do the most with them. They also tend to have the highest recycling rates today of all the materials. It doesn't mean we can't get them higher, but they have the most opportunity when they're captured. They can be recycled mechanically very successfully.

PET is going back into bottle grade. If you go into a Loblaws or a Walmart, that 24 pack of water is 100% recycled content, PET, so it can be done.

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

In the end, I wonder if it's better, then, if the government's going to ban anything, to ban certain type of plastics rather than certain types of products.

[Dan Lantz]

I'll be honest with you. I appreciate the difficulties with PVC, but it is a very recyclable plastic if you get enough of it. The difficulty is that we don't have economies of scale anymore because everybody says, “You can't do this anymore; you have to put it in this plastic.” You lose the opportunity. The environmental footprint of a polystyrene package is much better than the environmental footprint of a PET package. So, you're sitting here going, “What are we trying to achieve at the end of the day?” It's the unintended consequences of some of the decisions that we're making right now that are actually going to create possibly more problems that we're going to solve in putting forward some of our solutions.

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

I'm curious. I don't whether any of you have looked into it, but how much of the plastic products that we deal with in Canada come from other countries versus what we actually produce in Canada? That could change where the emphasis needs to be if we're going to do a better job around plastics.

Madame Dionne, I see you nodding your head yes.

[Geneviève Dionne]

I don't have any figures, but it is clear that our packaging industry is not flourishing. In Quebec and in Canada, we are very good at manufacturing certain types of packaging, but it is certain that a lot of supply will come from the United States or from overseas, as far as Asia.

If I compare once again with France, with which we are working a lot, 95% of packaging of products marketed in France are manufactured on French territory. Culturally, that is not what we do in Canada. That is why it is important to look at what is being done abroad in terms of standards.

However, we are very good in terms of fibre packaging, among others. We are also very good in glass industries and certain types of plastic industries, but not in all of them, clearly.

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

I'm wondering whether what we allow into Canada needs to be part of free trade agreement discussions in the future.