Environment Committee on March 15th, 2021

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

OECD countries have their own agreement for trade in plastic waste. The Basel ban amendment, which Canada refused to ratify, bans OECD countries from shipping hazardous waste destined for final disposal and certain hazardous waste destined for reuse, recycling and recovery to non-OECD states.

Was it your intention with the bill to address some of the problems in that ban amendment that the ban amendment aims to address? I want you to flesh that out a little more when it comes to non-OECD states and OECD countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about 25 seconds.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Yes, it was my plan to address that with the bill. We know non-OECD countries can't handle plastic as well as we can in the developed world. We've all seen the pictures of plastics being burned literally at the side of the oceans. That's also not environmentally friendly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you so much, Mr. Davidson.

That concludes our rounds. We thank you for your very clear explanation of your bill and your very clear and direct comments. We appreciate your answering these questions to lead off the study of your bill.

We look forward to the day we can all get together again in the House, and it will be good to see you.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm really looking forward to it. Come up to Lake Simcoe anytime. Colleagues, keep your sticks on the ice. Thanks so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Now we have our second panel, which is a five-member panel.

From the Basel Action Network, we have James Puckett. We have, from the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, Ms. Elena Mantagaris and Mr. Bob Masterson. From the David Suzuki Foundation, we have Sabaa Khan, and from the Recycling Council of Ontario, we have Jo-Anne St. Godard.

We have five minutes available to each witness for opening statements. Then we'll go to a couple of rounds of questions.

Who would like to start?

Mr. Puckett, since you're first on the list, would you like to begin?

[James Puckett, Executive Director, Basel Action Network]

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Jim Puckett. I'm the founder and director of the Basel Action Network, an international organization that takes its name from the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention is a UN treaty that seeks to control the export and import of hazardous household wastes and, more recently, plastic wastes.

At the outset, I wish to applaud Mr. Davidson for his profound and sincere concern over what is indeed a profound problem: plastic waste. The amount of plastic waste being produced globally is frightening, and it is increasing every year. It is highly polluting and often toxic, yet the industry that produces it actually has few answers when it comes to what to do about it.

For many years, we in developed countries have quietly exported this waste to China. This was until two years ago, when China said “Enough; no more.” This sudden refusal by China to take our waste caught countries like the U.S. and Canada flat-footed and sent waste brokers scrambling to divert our waste to other Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Last year, the U.S. exported over 25,000 metric tons per month to such countries. Canada exported less, around 1,000 metric tons per month. Collectively, the U.S. and Canada are sending more than 300,000 metric tons of our plastic waste to developing countries each year.

It's appropriate, in our view, to consider the U.S. and Canada together in this mess, because late last year the Canadian and U.S. governments secretly concluded a deal to ignore the Basel Convention's recent decision to control trade in contaminated and mixed plastics. Rather, the two countries wanted to allow the trade between them to remain opaque and uncontrolled.

This bilateral pact was condemned by the Center for International Environmental Law, as it ignores Canada's obligations under the Basel Convention. Further, it allows Canadian traders to use the United States, which is not a party to the Basel Convention, as a pivot point to export Canadian plastic waste via U.S. ports to Asia, thus undermining Canada's requirements under the convention.

However, here's the kicker for today's hearing. The legislation proposed by Bill C-204 aims to halt exports for final disposal, but all of this waste now moving to developing countries is not moving for the stated purpose of final disposal; it is all moving for recycling. That might sound good, except that this so-called environmentally benign recycling in Asia is anything but.

This kind of recycling is in fact a fraud perpetuated on all of us. I say this because a large proportion of the plastic waste cannot be economically recycled anywhere in the world. It is simply dumped in Asian farmland and routinely set afire. Even those plastic wastes that do get into the Asian factories to be melted down for some further use create an occupational health nightmare. The very harmful fumes of volatile organic compounds, mixed with chemical additives, become the indoor atmosphere breathed all day long, six days a week, by mostly women factory workers.

I have been inside these factories. This recycling guarantees a splitting headache within five minutes, and of course the long-term effects are far worse.

In fact, then, the biggest global problem, which Mr. Davidson and others are hoping to address with this bill, will not be addressed, because the bill currently only looks at exports for final disposal, which is landfilling or incineration. The bill currently does not address the heart of the problem, which is exports for recycling.

For this reason, this well-intended legislation should be amended, and how to do that is clear. The parties of the Basel Convention have already agreed to ban the export of hazardous waste for recycling from developed to developing countries. This prohibition is found as the new article 4A of the convention.

For some reason, Canada has refused to ratify this new article, something which all of the European Union and another 70 countries have done. Canada must do this. While they are at it, they can properly address the plastic and household waste export issue by modelling what the EU has done and include wastes listed in Basel annex II in the hazardous waste export ban to developing countries. That annex II is where the plastic wastes now sit.

In sum, to correct Canada's current stance, we recommend the following: Amend the current bill to add, in addition to the ban on export of plastic wastes for final disposal to all countries, an export ban of annex II wastes, meaning dirty and mixed plastics—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We're out of time.

[James Puckett]

I'm almost finished.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.

[James Puckett]

As well, Canada should immediately update its Basel ratification by ratifying the newly adopted article 4A. Finally, Canada should terminate the arrangement signed with the U.S. that allows no control at the border for contaminated and mixed plastic wastes.

By doing these things, Canada will be saying a proper yes to a responsible and ethical circular economy while saying no to an exploitative global waste shell game.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada now. We'll start with Ms. Mantagaris.

[Bob Masterson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada]

Mr. Chair, I think I'll be giving—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Oh, I'm sorry. There's only one person speaking.

Mr. Masterson, go ahead.

[Bob Masterson]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I'm here on behalf of the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada. We are an $80-billion chemistry and plastics industry in Canada. We are Canada's third-largest industry, with 80% of everything we make exported out of this nation. This is not a made-in-Canada issue. This is a global issue.

I'm pleased to be joined by my colleague, Elena Mantagaris. She'll certainly assist in responding to any of your questions.

Before I start by offering our perspectives on the bill itself, I think it's important to have some context.

First, it's very important to understand that our industry shares Parliament's and society's view that unmanaged plastic waste has no place in the natural environment.

Second, our industry accepts that it does have a disproportionate share of responsibility for addressing the issue. That must start with the acceleration of innovation towards a circular economy and with design. Our industry has set out ambitious goals in North America to ensure that by 2030 no plastic packaging is designed that is not recyclable. That's less than a mere decade away.

The third area is one that people are often surprised by. I think it's a major difference, at times, between Canada and the United States. Our industry fully endorses extended producer responsibility programs, EPR programs, such as the one in British Columbia, whereby industry is fully responsible for paying for and operating recycling systems that achieve aggressive province-wide recycling targets. We're working every day with other provinces. We expect that in a mere few years, we will have 85% of the Canadian population within industry-funded EPR programs.

Finally, our industry believes that a circular economy for plastics is not only possible but indeed achievable, and within a modest time frame. Our customers are demanding it. There's no question about that. There's a need for a number of transformational initiatives to respond to those customer demands.

You know, we've heard comments about small industries, small solutions. This is a global industry. It's a big industry. The real solutions are getting the recovered materials back into the plastic-producing facilities so that the resins themselves have a high material content of recycled resin, no matter what products they go into. If you have a 50% recycled content resin, then whatever those resins go to will have a 50% recycled content. That's a solution at scale.

We already shared with this committee a comprehensive critique of the private member's bill, so our remarks will be brief.

Again, we do understand Parliament's laudable intentions. Canadians are surely frustrated by the images of mixed, improperly sorted, contaminated plastic waste being sent off for disposal without any realistic expectation that they'll be recycled or processed. However, in our view, Bill C-204 is not necessary to address this. The bill was initiated prior to the Basel amendments, and those significant amendments have come into place, ratified by more than 170 countries, including Canada. The work continues. There's a lot of work in developing guidance for those amendments, and Canada's at the forefront of that work.

Certainly one thing this committee should take into account is the guidance that comes out of the Basel Convention for these amendments. Those amendments do outlaw trade in hazardous plastic wastes and in non-hazardous post-consumer plastics not intended for recycling and without prior and informed consent.

On many levels, Bill C-204 is redundant to those requirements, and at the same time it adds confusion. On the list of plastic wastes, we include things like ethylene, which is a feedstock. It's not a plastic waste.

MP Davidson gave a nice definition of “final disposal”, but there is no definition of it in the bill itself. There's a lack of process that will allow for the continued movement of post-consumer materials, specifically between Canada, the United States and other OECD countries.

There's a lot of work to realizing a global circular economy for post-consumer plastics. It starts with thinking of these materials as a resource and not a waste. We know what to do with waste: We put it in landfill. We know what to do with resources: We let resources move freely between political jurisdictions and across boundaries, so especially in the OECD countries, especially in this integrated North American marketplace, we have to tear down and not build up those barriers to moving post-consumer resources around. We have to recover back into Canada the material that goes into the U.S. with our products so that we can have that circular economy at scale.

Again, if we focus only on what we do in Canada, that's the 20% of plastics that we produce here that stays here. We send out 80% of what we make. If we want our facilities here to have plastic resin that has a high material content of post-consumer plastics, we need to have a mechanism to make sure we bring that back. Thickening the border for the exchange of post-consumer plastics as a resource will not assist with that.

Mr. Chair, those are our comments for today. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Masterson.

We'll go now to Dr. Khan, from the David Suzuki Foundation, for five minutes.

[Dr. Sabaa Khan, Director General, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, David Suzuki Foundation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To your members, I appreciate the invitation to appear before the committee today. Today's testimonies have highlighted the significant environmental and human health harms caused by plastic waste and the need to ensure a circular economy for plastics in order to mitigate pollution from plastics production and consumption.

Despite the devastating impacts of plastic pollution, global trading in plastic waste has mainly operated outside the scope of international rules relating to the transboundary movement of hazardous and certain other environmentally problematic wastes. These rules, as you know, are contained in the Basel Convention, a treaty signed by 187 countries, including Canada. Similar to the intent of Bill C-204, this treaty was adopted with the intention of ending toxic waste dumping towards developing countries.

While the Basel Convention obliges its parties to apply the procedure of informed consent when exporting, importing or transiting hazardous and certain non-hazardous wastes identified under the treaty, until 2019 the treaty did not explicitly provide for the application of these controls to solid plastic waste. In May 2019, however, it was amended to enhance transparency and accountability in the plastic waste trade. These rules, known as the plastic waste amendments, entered into force on January 1, 2021. Canada ratified the plastic waste amendments last December.

By virtue of its ratification, Canada is obliged to ensure that shipments of both hazardous plastic waste and non-hazardous plastic waste, newly identified under annex II of the Basel Convention as requiring special consideration, are controlled under the procedure of informed consent when exiting or entering the country.

This latter category of waste requiring special consideration encompasses the types of mixed and contaminated plastic waste shipments that were exported from Canada and seized in the Philippines and Malaysia in recent highly publicized cases of waste dumping. A similar shipment from Canada of mixed plastic waste was seized in Belgium at the port of Antwerp on November 9, 2019, while in transit towards India.

It is precisely because of incidents like these that parties to the Basel Convention, including Canada, decided to enhance the regulatory oversight of the plastic waste trade. It is also because of these incidents that Bill C-204 is before us today. The table provided to the committee as a reference document explains what Canada's new legal obligations are under Basel and their current status of implementation. The only plastic waste streams that should be exported from Canada without prior notification and consent are non-hazardous plastic waste streams listed in annex IX of the Basel Convention. As an OECD member, Canada also assumes legal obligations under the OECD council decision regulating the waste trade between OECD members.

While both the Basel Convention and the OECD council decision oblige Canada to regulate most mixed plastic waste shipments under enhanced environmental controls, these legal requirements have yet to be implemented in federal law. Other countries are ahead of us here; the European Union incorporated the Basel plastic waste amendments into the EU waste shipment regulation in October of last year. Bill C-204 is a positive step towards implementing Canada's obligations under Basel; however, the bill needs to be strengthened to achieve its intended purpose and to align with the Basel Convention amendments. The prohibition on export of plastic wastes for final disposal will be difficult to implement, as shipments are not identified in this way, and we know that the problem stems from shipments falsely labelled for recycling as green list waste.

The solution to ending the leakage of Canada's plastic waste into the global environment is for Bill C-204 to mirror the language of the Basel plastic waste amendments. In the interest of advancing the circular economy for plastics, non-hazardous plastic waste listed under annex XI of the Basel Convention should continue to be traded freely, while trade in plastic wastes categorized under the Basel Convention as hazardous or requiring special consideration should be subject to the requirements of section 185 of CEPA.

Canada needs a law addressing plastic waste exports. An arrangement signed between Canada and the U.S. prior to Canada's ratification of the plastic waste amendments has ignited major concern that Canadian plastic waste exports from the U.S. may be shipped onward for final disposal in developing countries. To effectively prohibit Canadian plastic waste from being dumped in developing countries, Canada should ratify the Basel ban amendment, which would restrict all hazardous waste exports to non-OECD countries. Bill C-204 should further implement the Basel ban amendment according to best international practice. This would require that the bill be amended to explicitly prohibit export of all plastic wastes to non-OECD countries, except those non-hazardous plastic wastes listed under annex IX of the Basel Convention.

Improving accountability for plastic waste exports, particularly in the large volume of trade with the U.S., is critical for Canada if it is to bring its domestic legislation into compliance with its new international legal obligations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to Ms. St. Godard from the Recycling Council of Ontario.

You have five minutes to give your presentation.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard, Executive Director, Recycling Council of Ontario]

Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to participate in today's session.

Bill C-204 underscores an important consequence of waste, which is the growing problem of plastic waste in particular. As has been noted, it is estimated that more than 90% of Canada's plastic discards end up in disposal, which has significant economic, environmental and social implications. While this bill highlights the global nature of plastic waste and Canada's responsibility, simply banning its export does not address the root of the issue.

Some plastic discards are desirable commodities. Their use as inputs to replace virgin material in the production of new goods comes with important economic, environmental and social gains. However, some overseas markets that we have become dependent upon employ low environmental, health and safety standards.

In the world of recycling, not all plastics are created equal. Demand, supply and commodity values for different resin types have dramatic variances. Despite these variances, plastics are often managed as a single or homogeneous stream in order to make collection simple and cost-effective. Consequently, plastic exports are often co-mingled, combining several different plastic resin types that are brokered between sellers and buyers as bales or loads. Less desirable and low-grade plastics are mixed and sold with valuable resins that are ultimately cherry-picked away for recycling. Unwanted plastics are then disposed of. As such, what we think has been exported for recycling may, in part, actually end up in disposal or landfill.

Global demand for plastic discards has changed dramatically over the last several years, and as a result, so has the movement of these discards, with China and several other southeast Asian countries limiting purchases and controlling entrance of plastics to certain specific types. In addition, strict contamination standards are being applied, which puts pressure on Canadian collectors, both municipal and private, to vastly improve the source separation of materials. These new restrictions have stunned markets, with some collectors forced to landfill and others to pay for storage while waiting for restrictions to ease and markets to rebound.

Throughout these market unsettlements, analysts, policy-makers and local operators have scrambled for information in order to estimate impacts and explore remedies. This has revealed that a key barrier to reducing plastic waste and improving market conditions is the general lack of market information and reliable data. With no regulatory requirement for tracking plastic discards from points of generation to final disposition, it is simply impossible to fully understand the economic and environmental losses due to disposal or recycling markets, be they local or foreign.

The practice of sending plastic materials to other jurisdictions without reporting and management controls should be stopped. Becoming fully accountable for our plastic waste is critical, which starts with understanding its journey from point of origin to final destination, locally and globally.

It is my recommendation that Bill C-204 be amended to include mandatory reporting requirements to track materials between generators, collectors, and local and foreign processors. This information, centrally organized and freely available, will provide crucial information for policy development, market and industry intelligence, and public awareness.

Better data will provide a clearer understanding of the combined total amount of plastic discards generated and detail the resin types. It will identify, at a resin or product level, what discards are most successfully collected and actually recycled and which are lost to disposal or the environment.

Better data will allow policy-makers to identify plastic materials that are prevalent in the waste streams and identify the regulatory approaches that are appropriate and necessary, such as bans from sale, bans from disposal, expanded extended producer responsibility and other market stimulus approaches, such as mandating a certain amount of recycled content or including plastics in procurement specifications.

Better data will enable more information and improved conditions to attract investment to grow and let flourish our domestic recycling industry. It will provide market knowledge for brand holders and manufacturers to optimize post-consumer recycled content in product design, which spurs demand and increases material value of plastics that may otherwise be lost to disposal.

In closing, while it is critical to account for all waste, and plastics in particular, simply banning export does not effectively address either the full environmental consequences or the economic losses of disposal. Plastic waste is at its peak, and its chronic market volatility requires a multi-faceted policy approach, underpinned by good data that is continually monitored and measured.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to our round of questions, starting with Mr. Albas for five minutes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for their testimony today. Obviously there's a lot to discuss here in a very short time, so I would appreciate your understanding that I can't ask everyone. Second, please answer as best you can as briefly as you can.

I'm going to start with Ms. Khan at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Essentially, if we exempt OECD countries, which would include the United States, wouldn't Parliament be creating a loophole whereby Canada could send waste to countries such as the United States, and then once it's there, American actors could then ship it to developing nations?

[Dr. Sabaa Khan]

I'll respond to the member by saying that yes, there is indeed a loophole when it comes to the Canada-U.S. agreement. The legitimacy of the agreement that exists between Canada and the U.S. under the Basel Convention is disputed, because in the U.S. plastic wastes are not regulated to the equivalent standard of the Basel Convention.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Okay.

The challenge I have with that particular loophole is a practical one. Once any plastic for recycling leaves our borders, our line of sight becomes incredibly opaque, and we have to basically count on it happening. Really, if I'm someone who's dealing in this area, I'm going to go to the closest and largest customers or to the people who would maybe scale it and use it for their own ends. That would be the United States. I can't see shipping some of the stuff to other countries when the United States is so close.

According to The New York Times, shipments of waste from the United States have not decreased, as they are not a party to the Basel Convention, and there's nothing stopping them from sending it whatever they want, even if the treaty says others are not supposed to accept it.

Does that not prove that we need to be very careful of what we send to the United States?

[Dr. Sabaa Khan]

It certainly does, and if Canada were to legally implement its new international legal obligations, all mixed plastic waste exports would have to be subject to the procedure of informed consent, which means that no exports could take place without prior notification to the importing country and without also the consent and proof that the processor can actually handle those wastes in an environmentally sound manner.

What the Basel plastic waste amendments do is create enhanced transparency, and that's the problem with the recycling industry. At the moment, you see shipping containers that are labelled as green list waste or recyclable scrap. There's simply not the transparency needed for Canada to control those exports.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I'm from British Columbia, and obviously we have companies like Merlin Plastics that have done great work in reutilizing materials. Obviously British Columbia, as the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada pointed to earlier, has adopted rules for enhanced producer responsibilities, and we see Ontario and Alberta doing the same—both with Conservative governments, I might add.

It is our waste, and we're responsible for it. Why wouldn't we just put our foot down as a country and say that we will not facilitate non-recyclable waste exports, period?