Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.
I study microplastic and nanoplastic pollution in the remotest areas of the globe. I showed plastic transport through the air, falling into the oceans and ejecting into the air through sea spray. I studied peat bogs that showed microplastics started raining down the early 1970s and have increased ever since, exactly matching plastic production. I find particle numbers grow exponentially the smaller you look. In Canada, I've studied plastic deposition from hurricanes and in seafood.
I mention this because all these measurements were made while everyone thought we were recycling. Canadians doing the right thing has little impact on their exposure to plastic, and it makes no difference if it's recycled, landfilled or incinerated. It leaks from its manufacture through to its end of life, and it's a global problem.
That drinking water in front of you contains plastic. Every glass of water on the planet does too. I'm certain that if I measured what plastic you're exposed to now—in water, food and even the air you breathe—it would be the lowest exposure of the rest of your life. If you manage to mechanically recycle 100% of Canada's waste tomorrow, it would likely only increase that.
There's so much plastic in the environment already that it's doubtful your grandchildren will ever enjoy the exposure level you have right now. They're exposed from placental serum to breast milk, and it's rapidly increasing. How much plastic can humans withstand? I don't know, but I worry that by the time we find out, it will be too late to do anything about it.
The plastics industry has had 50 years and an almost unlimited budget to develop recycling. It built the plastic. It knows the chemistry. If anyone could do it, the plastics industry could, but even Shell's advanced recycling pledge recently failed. Shell said it was not feasible and cited regulatory shifts.
Mechanical recycling plants themselves are leaky. I studied a new state-of-the-art recycling plant in Scotland, where 6% of the plastic that went in was leaking out as microplastics into the river. It recycled four million tonnes and released over 200,000 tonnes of microplastics and an unfathomable amount of nanoplastics. That does not even take into account the atmospheric release from recycling, the energy required or the risk of serving children french fries in recycled plastic that contains any of 16,000 chemicals.
The recycling expert witness you had here admitted you're not recycling anything now; you're only downcycling into inferior products. Making building materials out of it just means adding toxic flame retardants, PFAS, which are already in all of us.
I'm not saying that we should not look into recycling highly essential items, but I can't see the logic for governments to spend public money to keep this hazardous material in circulation.
Waste plastic is not a valuable resource. It's the equivalent of capturing lead to put back into fuel or recycling asbestos into more roofing. Scientifically and environmentally, for human health and climate change, and even economically, it does not make sense to recycle the majority of plastic. There are plenty of good alternatives that will create a true green-jobs economy if extracted, produced and reused safely and sustainably, such as glass, metal and plant-based materials, like areca palm and bamboo, etc. Governments can eliminate the cost to municipalities and consumers in the transition to these better alternatives by diverting a fraction of the subsidies now enjoyed by the plastics industry to safer and more sustainable materials.
We're not just dealing with plastic waste here; we're dealing with a global environmental and public health crisis. When you stop asking how much plastic the world can create without killing too many whales and instead look at how many organisms, including us, can be affected by the disintegration of a single plastic bag, you begin to understand the gravity of the situation. We are involved in an extremely dangerous experiment, and every day lost by investing in a profit-driven, short-term technofix to save the plastics industry is time wasted. There are no borders in nature. If Canada wants to protect the health of Canadians and the environment, Canada needs to do more to solve the global problem of plastic pollution right now. In short, you're addressing the wrong end of the plastic life cycle if you want to safeguard people and the environment.
The people who can solve this problem are in this room. You are the people who can regulate the plastic industry; curb production; make Canada a green economy powerhouse, not a pollution enabler; require disclosure of chemicals used; police the industry; make industry prove it is environmental before being put on the market; criminalize greenwashing; fund research into removing plastic from farm to table and fund global—