Good afternoon, dear members of the committee.
My name is Laurence Boudreault, and I am the general manager of Bosk Bioproducts. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
Bosk Bioproducts' mission is to reduce the global accumulation of plastic waste. We are a Quebec company that has been developing for more than 10 years, thanks to the support of our partners and the government, an ecological alternative to fossil-based plastics that will have significant benefits for Canada.
We are therefore of the opinion that a regulation on single-use plastics will help better regulate the use of plastics, but it is important not to ban innovative ecological materials such as PHAs, or polyhydroxyalacannoates, a natural biopolymer that offers the same properties as conventional plastics, but which is truly compostable.
Under the REGEN trademark, Bosk Bioproducts develops, manufactures and sells bioplastics based on PHAs, bio-based from renewable materials, and compostable. According to recent tests carried out at the National Research Council Canada, or NRC, Bosk Bioplastics meet recognized compostability standards. We offer these bioplastics to manufacturers of finished products to replace petrochemical plastics.
Bosk Bioproducts offers an innovative solution that will, with your support, build a prosperous circular economy. It is important to know that our technology contributes to the circular economy on several levels. On the one hand, our innovative technology makes it possible to recover untapped by-products from the forest industry to transform them into value-added products, and on the other hand, our technology, which makes it possible to produce PHAs, offers a sustainable solution to the end-of-life plastics.
PHAs are a series of biobenign natural materials that have appeared in nature for over three billion years, similar to other natural materials such as wood, other cellulose-based materials, proteins and starch. These are micro-organisms that produce them naturally from sugars, starches, cellulosics and vegetable oils. Biodegradation of PHA materials in all environments—compost, soil, water—is comparable or faster than cellulose, in other words, paper.
PHA-based materials can partially replace any of the traditional fossil polymer families. Depending on the type and grade, PHA materials can be used for a wide variety of applications, including injection molding, extrusion, thermoforming, foam, non-wovens, fibres, 3D printing, paper and fertilizer coating, glues and adhesives.
Thanks to the support of our ecosystem and our government, for more than 10 years, we have been working to develop and market an ecological alternative to fossil fuel-based plastics. Our technology was developed by working with the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Quebec and the National Research Council of Canada. All of this work was made possible thanks to the financial support of our partners, the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada.
With the production of REGEN at our new Quebec plant, we are now at the stage of offering our ecological material to current players in the plastics value chain, as an alternative to fossil fuel-based plastics.
Bosk Bioproducts aims to deploy its technology on multiple paper mill sites. For each full-sized plant that would be built on a paper mill site, this means the valorization of thousands of tons of unused material from the paper mills, the creation of about ten high-level jobs, the transformation of a waste management cost into a new profit centre for paper mills, increased profitability of the paper mill and longer useful-life, the production of tens of thousands of tonnes of compostable bioplastics to replace their petrochemical counterparts, in addition to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas.
The Bosk Bioproducts project will not only promote the competitiveness of the Canadian forest sector, but also position Quebec and Canada as a global producer of bioplastics, in line with the foundations of sustainable development and the circular economy.
In short, Bosk Bioproducts works with our ecosystem and the government to offer an ecological solution to fossil fuel-based plastics. There are sustainable solutions to plastics, and we believe it is important not to ban the use of bio-based and compostable biopolymers for the manufacture of single-use products.
Thank you.