Environment Committee on April 26th, 2021

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for that response. I think I heard at the outset that you were supportive of the federal government's proposed approach to banning certain items. I'm hearing a bit of a different message now. Can you elaborate on the place that you see for bans specifically?

[Maja Vodanovic]

I agree with the ban—I feel funny being here today talking about what I say in private—but when you talk about banning straws, that's great, but it is so little. It is so little. We have so much more to do. Canada is a producer of oil. We are chemical experts. We can do this. We can be the forerunners in this circular economy based on plastics.

Just banning straws is not enough. We can do so much more.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I understand that the list of six product types proposed for banning is based on a number of criteria. My question is whether, using those same criteria, the federal government should capture a wider range of products. Are there other products that you would like to see included in that list?

[Maja Vodanovic]

What I really would like the government to do is impose a recycling percentage. I think a 30% recycling content imposed on all packaging in Canada would create a much, much bigger shift in our economy than just banning.

Yes to banning the toxic plastics around number three. Number five is not that great, and some number sevens. We should ban those and just do the plastics that are not toxic. We should go beyond just bans, definitely. I mean, if we want to be ambitious like the ocean charter that the government has embarked on, we have to be ambitious in other areas as well.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you.

Living in British Columbia, I'm quite familiar with the EPR system here. The small community I live in has curbside pickup. We had it for a few years and then we lost it. We just got it back, which is very exciting, but I know it's a voluntary system. Many people don't avail themselves of the recycling option that is provided.

Is EPR sufficient to get us to where we need to be in terms of recovery rates in the recycling system?

[Maja Vodanovic]

I think we need EPR, but we also need, combined with EPR, the deposit system where people get money back. That is huge. You get good-quality plastics and you get lots of it.

I was in your place for different commissions for Montreal, and usually the industry is against it. The producers say, “No, no, no, the deposit system is no good. Just put it in recycling,” but I think, as does the whole zero waste council, it should be a combination of curbside and the deposit system, which is very, very good. If you have a price tag on it, or if you buy something that you know is....

Anyway, I won't go into that. Eco-fees is too much of an issue. I hope we have a nationwide EPR system that is at least as good as B.C.'s or better. Let's not downscale ourselves.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Picking up on where you left off with regard to eco-fees, and looking at the six product types that are being proposed for the federal ban, is it practical to apply eco-fees to things like straws, six-pack rings, and those kinds of products? They seem to be falling through the cracks of our current recycling approach.

[Maja Vodanovic]

You can easily ban certain things, no problem. There are certain things you don't need. If you go to a restaurant, and you have takeout, you have all these things. If you know you're paying 20¢, 30¢, or 40¢ for that, you will change, and you won't do it. You will bring your plate. You will bring your bag if you're paying 50¢ for a bag, when they give it to you. You will change. That has been proven around the world. Paying fees curbs consumer attitude.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to our second round, which is a five-minute round.

We'll begin with Mrs. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, and thanks to all the witnesses.

Mr. Olivier, I'm glad you could join us, because you said something that also sparked my concern, and that's the issue concerning masks.

What do you see ultimately happening with these masks? Can you speak further about that? Have you thought this particular issue through?

[Marc Olivier]

Yes, of course.

We tried to start in a place that would be sensitive to action. We found that sensitivity in a university. Actually, it's two institutions: the Université de Sherbrooke and the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke. In them, we succeeded in establishing a form of mask recovery because of the pressure from student and other groups. We have some very active environmental groups in the institutions.

So, since November, we have been systematically using specially marked containers to recover standard-issue masks, because people can wear them only for half a day before having to replace them. We have already filled one container to the brim. We have a working agreement with a processing plant in the region. We want the project to take the form of a circular economy in which plants in the University area, in Estrie, the Eastern Townships, can participate. So we have come up with the idea of making a new bio-based material with the masks.

An average mask contains 2.47 g of polypropylene. You get almost 2.5 g of polypropylene just by cutting out the rectangle. So you recover the masks, you simply take off the elastic and you get very good quality polypropylene that is completely recyclable. It's no problem at all, except that you have to set up a way to recover and store the masks and then transport them to a factory where you can make the bio-based material by mixing in recycled wood fibre with the polypropylene. That gives a bio-based composite of polypropylene reinforced with wood fibre.

The bio-based material can be used in one of three ways. We can use it directly to make construction panels, 4 x 8 panels, for example, or wall panels. You can also mould it to make various objects because the material behaves like plastic, except that it is much stronger because of the high content of shredded fibre. That's the first possibility.

The second possibility is depolymerization. A company in Estrie called Enerkem takes all kinds of organic and carbon-based materials and depolymerizes them. This means that it breaks down polymers into the small constituent molecules. They then produce syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which they then synthesize into all kinds of other molecules. Currently, it is synthesizing ethanol from any kind of organic material that it has depolymerized in this way.

The final possibility is to use it as an alternative carbon-neutral fuel. Given that it is a bio-based material made up of two thirds of organic matter and one third of fossil-based polypropylene, the bio-based material as a whole is classified as one that has a role in sustainable development. It can be used as a alternative, carbon-neutral fuel. To me, burning it is not the best thing to do; recycling it is better. However, it can be burned to drive a small generator in a plant, for example, producing electricity in a closed circuit, because it is completely carbon neutral.

So you can see that it has significant financial advantages. Whatever a company does with this bio-based material, it can put itself in a particularly advantageous position in terms of carbon credits and anything else that will come along in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Baker, you have the floor.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses who are here today. I have questions for all of you, and I won't have time to get to all of you.

Mr. Moucachen, my colleague Mr. Saini was asking you a question at the end of his time, and I think you got cut off in answering him. I wanted to follow up to see if you had anything else to say on it. He was asking you how you viewed the government's proposal to introduce recycled content standards.

Do you have anything else you wanted to add to that? You got cut off, and I wanted to make sure you had a chance to fully answer that.

[Tony Moucachen]

It's a great approach. We know that market demand is going to create and everything else is going to follow. I believe the post-consumer content is going to be good, but equally important, it's going to go back to the design of the package. The package has to be designed so that it can be taken back and reformulated over and over again. It may cost more money to make the product originally if you want to reuse it over and over again than if you just use it.... You extend it to a durable application.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that. I'm going to move on to Mayor Vodanovic.

Mayor Vodanovic, I think it was in response to a question from Mr. Bachrach that you said you have products in your waste disposal or your recycling system that you can't sell off. I think that's what I heard you say. If that's correct, why can't you sell them?

[Maja Vodanovic]

Okay. Quickly, plastics don't like to be mixed. There are about seven types.

Types one and two are very popular. We can separate them and we can sell them, but for types three, four, five and six—soft plastics—all of that is mumble-jumble. It's stuck together. It has no value because we cannot sort it out. It's too labour-consuming. When I go to the store I can't even look at food anymore, because all I see is number four, number three, and “why are you doing number five?” It's all going to get mixed up.

Canada is not heading towards better recycling. We're heading in a different direction. There are more and more plastics on the shelves that are combined and that cannot be recycled. They're multi-layered multi-plastics, all put together, that cannot be recycled. If on the shelves we have plastics that are recyclable, then I can sell the stuff, but now, I can sell only types one and two, and for all the rest, even for the people who really want to do something, it's really hard for types three, four, five, six and seven.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

What's your recommendation, then? Is it your recommendation that we ban the use of certain types of plastics? What's your solution to that particular problem?

[Maja Vodanovic]

I think we need to ban certain plastics that are very hard to recycle, like number five and maybe number three. I'm not an expert, but we should take a better look at this. For number seven, where everything is combined with aluminum, it's very difficult. We should stick to number ones and number twos, and we should.... I don't know. I forget the question. This is such a complex issue in two minutes. We should have a system that would allow us to recuperate it and put it back on the market. Right now, there are too many elements that are not right in the system, and it's not true that it gets recycled.

We have to look at the problem. I want to say that it's very good that we're banning certain things. It's a good start, but we need to do so much more.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I think I have about a minute left. Mayor Vodanovic, just quickly, if you can, you talked about putting a price on things and the importance of doing that. I think you mentioned a levy or some sort of deposit or additional fee, whatever you want to call it, in terms of incenting behaviour or asking people to change their behaviour.

I think a great example of that is a price on pollution, like what Canada is trying to do in terms of putting a price on pollution to get us to reduce our emissions. Would you agree that it's a good example of that, an effective example of that?

[Maja Vodanovic]

Yes, it's a good example of that, and the strange thing is that we already pay for that. There's a tax on everything you buy that helps the producers recycle it. You actually pay for the recycling, so how about you pay more for something that is really not recyclable and you pay less for something that can go into Merlin's machine there and can be done?

We need to set the standard, because right now in Canada, we don't know what's a good package and what's a bad package. You have no idea what you're buying.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That's interesting.

[Maja Vodanovic]

Let's first of all know what we're buying. People are making the standards, but we need the government. All the industries are going, “We want the federal government to help us.” The municipalities need you too. We need to continue this conversation.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Pauzé, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

My questions are for Mr. Olivier.

Mr. Olivier, after everything you have told us about masks, I have to admit that I'm wondering whether I shouldn't be helping you to collect them.

Seriously, do you, as an expert in plastics, consider that the science of bioplastics is progressing at a promising speed?

Are we unnecessarily slow in building recycling and upgrading facilities? In other words, do we have the technology we need to create a genuine circular economy? Are we not delaying it for reasons that are neither technological nor organizational?