Environment Committee on April 28th, 2021

[Jim Goetz]

I just want to go back to a comment that was made earlier by the honourable member from Quebec. I left Alberta out of the comments before about recycling rates, but when it comes to beverage containers, Alberta actually has one of the highest, if not the highest, collection and recycling rates in Canada. That's just a fact, and it's backed up by the provincial government.

To the question on the circular economy, I live in downtown Toronto. I know, for example, that there are recycling companies that are on the very edge of Toronto that want to collect and buy from the City of Toronto every piece of PET plastic they can possibly buy in order to produce it, recycle it and sell it into the Canadian and North American markets. This is a real opportunity, especially, quite frankly, as governments move toward recycled PET content and recycled plastic content in material.

This is an opportunity. It's a huge opportunity for Canada. I would say we are way ahead of the United States on this—on the processing, on the marketing and what we're collecting—and I think we really need to harness that opportunity.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That was my only question. I'll cede back my time.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Did you cede it to me? Just checking.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Yes, directly to Ms. May.

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

I think he wanted to cede it to me, because then I could apologize once again for being so uncharitable and irresponsible and taking up so much time.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

I don't think there's any time left now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We're going to Ms. Saks now.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Albas, while you are ceding time and being apologetic, thank you for making sure I have mine as well.

We've talked a lot about costs. We've talked about the cost to industry, and we've talked about the cost of jobs. The minister herself referenced a potential loss of $500 million in sales by the potential uncertainties of labelling plastic as toxic.

I'd like to direct this to Ms. Wallis and Ms. Wirsig.

What's the economic cost if we don't do this?

[Ashley Wallis]

According to the federal government's own assessment, there's nine billion dollars' worth of plastic pollution, plastic littered or plastic in landfill every year, which means that it is plastic that we are creating, using once most of the time and then disposing of. There's a huge opportunity if we can do a better job of either reusing those plastic materials or actually effectively recycling them in a closed-loop system.

Then there are also the costs that are hard to articulate right now in terms of the financial costs to our health care system should these plastics prove to actually be harmful to our health—since we know we are ingesting them—as well as the impacts on our fisheries and our oceans as we continue to inundate these ecosystems with plastic trash.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

With the costs of $500 million in sales versus $9 billion in economic costs in addition to health costs, I think the math's pretty clear.

Ms. Wirsig, did you want to add to that?

[Karen Wirsig]

Maybe Mr. Lee would be better positioned to speak to this, but I can tell you that Ontario municipalities alone spend $150 million on the blue box program. That is to try to deal with the recycling of materials, including plastics, which, as he pointed out, often contaminate other waste streams, including both the recycling stream and the composting stream.

Right now, without acting—without doing the kinds of things he's suggesting with better definitions, without putting in producer responsibility and without banning those difficult to recycle items—basically we're going to see rising costs to the municipalities to deal with the mess and the rising costs of pollution.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

There's one more cost I'd like to wrap my head around if we can. Perhaps Mr. Lee can best answer this.

What's the cost of landfilling single-use plastics?

[Norman Lee]

Right now our cost of landfilling in Peel region is about $70 per tonne. That's maybe on the low end, but typical for landfilling costs in Ontario.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

How much landfill costs are you, just even in your own region, dealing with on an annual basis?

[Norman Lee]

Right now we send about half of our waste to landfills, so about 250,000 tonnes. I'm not good at math, but if you multiply that by $70 it gives you a ballpark. It's a big number.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

I'm sure we can square that out a little later. Thank you for that.

My next question is for Ms. Wallis again, if I can shift back to her.

We talked about plastics being unfavourable and toxic and not good for us on many levels of the food chain and our health. What substitutes would be most favourable?

[Ashley Wallis]

As much as possible we want to be moving away from single use altogether, so I am not super keen to give another recommendation for a single-use product for some of the reasons that Mr. Lee brought up. Switching to supposed compostable materials presents new challenges to our waste systems. I think really what we want to do here as much as possible is transition to reusable containers, especially when it comes to packaging and single-use products.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Okay. I have one last question to interject on my time.

I grocery shop. I'm a mom. It gives me anxiety—Ms. Wirsig mentioned that—I am one of those people.

In addition to the six items that we have on the list, is there anything else that you would potentially like to add, for the record, that we should be considering?

[Ashley Wallis]

Oh my goodness. There are so many things. I am also a mom who gets very anxious when I go grocery shopping, with all the plastic.

My top items would be single-use coffee cups and lids, because we know they're so challenging to recycle and they are consistently found in the environment.

I would like the government to do a full assessment of cigarette butts and alternatives to them, because we know they are also one of the most commonly found littered items in the environment and are contaminated with toxic chemicals from cigarette smoke.

Another is all forms of polystyrene, because it fragments into small pieces and ends up all the places it isn't supposed to end up. I would love to see a ban on that.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

That's perfect. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That's it for our meeting today.

I thank the witnesses for their insights and answers to the excellent questions from all the members.

We have one more meeting left in this study. On Monday, we will be having a steering committee meeting to try to regroup and set a direction for the next few weeks, because there's a lot coming at us.

Thank you to the clerk, the analysts and the support staff in the House of Commons. I don't think I've forgotten anyone to thank.

It was a great meeting. We've had some really good meetings as part of this study.

Again, thank you to the witnesses and Minister Savage. It was nice to have you with us today.

We'll all see each other soon enough.

The meeting is now adjourned.