Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We really appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee today.
My name is Jim Goetz. I am president of the Canadian Beverage Association, an organization representing the majority of non-alcoholic beverage companies in Canada.
CBA members directly employ over 20,000 Canadians in more than 200 facilities nationwide, in every region of the country. The refreshment industry supports jobs directly and indirectly in retail, food service, vending, convenience and restaurant channels.
The CBA and our members share the Government of Canada's goal to reduce plastic waste, increase recycling and transition to a more robust circular economy.
Our beverage containers are made to be remade. The plastic materials used are designed to be recycled and repurposed. Beverage containers are collected at high rates and recycled at high rates, and are valuable within the collection stream and circular economy value chain. They are not intended to be disposed of as waste. Not only is PET, the plastic that beverage bottles are made of, recyclable, but it can easily be recycled to achieve food-grade quality through mechanical or advanced recycling, and be made back into a bottle or other food-contact packaging.
The government's discussion paper defines single use as “designed to be thrown away after being used only once”. Distinguishing between true single-use plastic and PET beverage bottles and HDPE caps is critical to facilitating informative and accurate future discussions.
Beverage containers are collected, recycled and processed here in Canada, supporting jobs within the circular domestic economy from coast to coast, including large recycling facilities in Quebec, British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta.
The CBA and our members play a leadership role to manage and strengthen regional recycling programs, mostly at the provincial level. These programs currently achieve beverage container recycling rates averaging 75%. Some jurisdictions reach 85%, a robust recovery rate compared to other plastics overall.
CBA is actively engaged in extended producer responsibility recycling programs, either in place for decades or in development, which will work to increase harmonization and efficiency and invest over $300 million in beverage container recycling programs nationwide. We believe EPR is the appropriate management tool for beverage container packaging. This approach is instrumental to achieving current and future material collection targets, which we support and advocate in favour of reaching higher targets.
As you consider a new plastics framework, such as the recently announced list of banned materials from ECCC and recycled content standards, we ask that you study and account for the complexity of the detailed planning and overall material engineering and replacement projects that industry will have to carry out, including supplier capacity; lead time; technical support capabilities, depending on how many industry lines need to be changed; the cost of converting, retooling, and downtime; back-up contingency planning; and establishing an appropriate and workable phase-out period.
We believe that recycled content standards legislation should allow flexibility on how our members achieve an overall recycling content percentage required to meet set targets.
While Canada has high recovery rates on beverage containers relative to other materials, we must be mindful of the amount of recycled material that will be available domestically to meet recycled content targets. We want to get to those targets, but there has to be the material available to do it, particularly if it's set in legislation.
In summary, we are proud that beverage containers have the highest recovery and recycling rate for plastic packaging in Canada. Our members have made commitments to increase the recycled content of their PET plastic bottles in the coming years and will continue their contribution to a circular economy.
We will carry on building and supporting recycling programs in every jurisdiction across the country to keep beverage containers and caps out of the environment and retain their value by increasing rates of recovery and recycling across Canada.
I thank the committee and especially the committee staff. I had some technical problems, and the staff were excellent in helping me to get connected.
Thank you to the committee. I look forward to any questions.