Evidence of meeting #100 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was plastics.
A video is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Allen, based on the science and the scientific studies you're aware of, do you think it's a good idea to have a bill that proposes to completely abolish the main regulatory measure enabling the government to act on the single-use plastics issue? That's what's on the table right now. Recently, there was a debate on a bill that goes against what we just said.
Scientifically speaking, is that a good thing or not?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
As a scientist, as a human being, as a citizen of earth, I say it's insanity. Industry has proven that they cannot self-regulate. They lied to us about recycling for the last 50 years in saying, “No, no, it's okay; we've got a fix.” They lied. It doesn't work. It's been proven that it's more dangerous to try to recycle it than it is to bury it.
The material needs to stop. We need to make regulations. The government needs to do this. We need to stop greenwashing that we think there's a way to do this. It's not going to happen any time soon. It doesn't matter if it's enzymes, bacteria, fungus or insects that they try to get to make it work; none of them ever make it to a scalable stage. It doesn't work.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Allen. That's reassuring. Personally, I find that reassuring. I trust science, not just people's ideas and the interests of large corporations that are pushing their economic priorities instead of environmental ones. I like to talk about science and research, and I am pleased to hear the opinion of people like you, whose expertise is not just ideology-based but broadly knowledge-based.
Mr. Allen, in the time I have left, I'd like you to talk to us about the toxicity of degraded plastics and their effects on human health and the environment. What can you tell us about that? What should the government do to further protect these two areas?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
I'd love to say we could just get the money hose out to fix this problem. A lot of it could be done with that.
I don't think the problem is educating the public; I think the problem is educating the government and trying to get it back on track, because your job in the government is to look after the people and the environment.
Well, now's your chance.
Bloc
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
Yes. It's a new pipeline.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Allen, you took the words right out of my mouth. Do you think that a government investing $34 billion in a pipeline is a good idea in terms of science, yes or no?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
That's our time. You'll have another round.
Now we'll turn to MP Cannings for six minutes.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you.
Thank you to both witnesses here today.
I'm going to continue with Dr. Allen. You have put forward a pretty compelling case for the dangers of plastics and you mentioned any number of alternatives. We are trying to cut down our plastics, obviously, in the environment.
Are there alternatives available for everything we use plastics for now?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
No, absolutely not. Medical science today would not be a tenth of what it is. You can't have that. That plastic has a place. We all know it. There are some very good plastics and very good materials that do specific jobs better than anything else we have at the moment. We need those.
The rest of it, like plastic packaging.... Half of the plastic issue is single-use packages. Walk into any supermarket, and I guarantee you that when you look down that aisle, 95% of the products on that shelf have some sort of plastic packaging or PFAS on them.
You know and I know that less than 10% of that packaging on that shelf in every supermarket aisle in every supermarket in the country is being recycled. It's all going to landfills. It's not being recycled.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I can see alternatives for most of that packaging.
What would you say, for instance, to Mr. Duguay? Maybe I'll ask him if I have time.
How do we replace, say, film on perishable vegetables, or is that something...? Should we go back to when you and I were young and we didn't have that? Are there trade-offs that we have to make on that?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
I'd say we need to go back and look at the logistics. The logistics, currently, are that fruits and vegetables get put into plastic and are shipped a very long way. The plastic helps make it look good until it gets in your fridge, where it starts to go off quickly.
I think we just need to redesign the farm-to-fork system to use big containers. Perhaps that's it. I don't know. Logistics isn't my field of expertise, but there has to be a way that we can remove the plastic from the entire system, or at least minimize it.
There are plastic trays that you buy, and the fruit comes wrapped in plastic film with a foam tray underneath. I never asked for my fruits and vegetables to look like that. I never asked for plastic to be on my cucumbers, but it's there. It got pushed on the public. We didn't ask for it. It was all to increase the profits of the supermarket by making food last or look better for a little longer.
I think the government could step in here and start to fund some research into this. Industry should be looking at it. You should be regulating it.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
You've also made the case for not recycling plastics. It just makes more plastic, and that causes the environmental issues you're concerned about.
What should we be doing with the plastic that's in our environment now, in our world, even if all countries tomorrow created these alternatives and we all went cold turkey on plastics? What should we be doing with the plastics in our environment right now?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
Unfortunately, there is no safe way to store this material. If you put it in the landfills, it leaches out as microplastics. If you incinerate it, you get chemicals into the air, and some microplastics if it's not done correctly. There's no safe way to do this.
For the moment, until we find something, we should be landfilling, but that's a temporary fix. We should be sorting the plastic we put in the landfills so that we can recover it easily and we know we have that type of plastic stored here. We can go back and get it later when we can do something safe with it.
We can't let the industry decide what that word means. The plastics treaty, for example, is something that scientists need to be paying attention to a bit more.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I think you said something about how we could find alternatives for about 90% of the plastic we're using today. That other 10% is for things we couldn't replace.
Would that be about right, if we completely went to other materials?
Chief Executive Officer, Healthy Earth, As an Individual
I wouldn't put a number on it just yet. There are too many different fields and too many applications for me to say precisely how much.
However, yes, I'm absolutely certain that the vast majority of plastics don't even need to exist in the first place. It was just cheap and profitable to make it. I mean, we didn't have it when we were young. We survived. I'm sure we could go back to that.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you.
We'll now turn to our second round. We'll start that off with MP Tochor for five minutes.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Chair, and thanks to our witnesses.
I'll change gears to the reality on the ground.
Last Friday, I was at the food terminal in Toronto. It's one of, I believe, five terminals in North America for produce and other food goods coming into Canada. It was a very interesting tour, and I met a lot of different people working in that area.
Mr. Duguay, could you outline in a bit more detail how much faster various types of produce will spoil without the use of plastic packaging?
Sustainability Specialist, Canadian Produce Marketing Association
It's a great question, because it depends on the produce and how far it's coming from.
Again, part of our challenge is that we are trying to maximize...and meet the expectations consumers and citizens have in this country in terms of having access to fresh produce year-round. What that means is that at certain times of the year, produce travels a couple of hundred kilometres. It travels in a package that maintains quality and food safety over that relatively short period of time.
In the fall, winter and spring, the expectation is still there, and that produce travels from California or Mexico. When it's travelling that much farther, in some cases refrigerated and in some cases not, the risk is that the wrong form of packaging can make it so that the produce won't survive the trip at all or that we'll lose significant portions of it by the time it makes it to the depot. That's what we call “shrink” in the industry. That percentage can be as high as double digits. It's 50%, 60% or more if you're talking about fundamentally the wrong package. As a result, that's not what the industry uses. What it's trying to do is maximize the amount of food that survives the trip, maintains quality and remains safe so it can be distributed and consumed. That's ultimately what we're in the business of doing: getting food.
I'm sorry. Maybe that's not a direct answer.
The wrong packaging can pretty well prevent that supply chain from fundamentally working. That's the balancing act the industry faces every day.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
You brought up “shrink”. What would that do to the price of food?
Sustainability Specialist, Canadian Produce Marketing Association
Well, the price of food is linked to how much you pay and how much you can put on the shelf. Hence, when you look at something like bulk versus packaged produce, it's a challenge. There's a different level of loss when something is sold in bulk versus sold packaged. Stores and retailers make decisions based on consumer preferences, consumption patterns, etc.
The challenge is this: If you have produce that has significant shrink in transit from the farm to the depot, that has to be reflected in the cost, because ultimately the grower gets paid x dollars and you're trying to sell that amount.
Right now, you'll see shrink levels in single digits, depending on, again, the commodity type and time of year. If those shrink levels increase, you could almost say that you're going to see prices increasing proportionally. When we looked at the impact of a significant reduction in plastic packaging for produce—and I said “significant”, like effectively banning plastic packaging for produce last year—we saw the potential for cost increases of over 30%. That was the order of magnitude.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
We're in a cost of living crisis right now. Everyone is talking about how expensive food is. I'm assuming the CPMA has heard those concerns.
Sustainability Specialist, Canadian Produce Marketing Association
Absolutely.