Science and Research Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2024

[Marina Pietrosel, Principal, Sustainable Development and Compliance, Sustainable Strat Inc.]

Good morning.

My name is Marina Pietrosel. I thank Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas for suggesting that the committee invite me to talk about my experience. I'd like to talk more about the positives than the negatives.

My experience is really in the food processing sector, where I worked for over 10 years. I also worked in the recycling sector for 10 years. In addition, I've done work on extended producer responsibility programs, which exist in every province in Canada. I have experience on the ground. I don't have high-level scientific experience, but it is scientific in the sense that we do a lot of studies on materials recycling and recyclability. I could talk about any material, but today we're talking about plastics.

In 2021, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment developed guidelines for recycled content in containers and packaging for all new products. The deadline was set for 2025, but it went nowhere.

I should note that environmental issues fall under provincial jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the federal government shouldn't provide assistance, quite the contrary. Be that as it may, this falls under provincial jurisdiction, and all provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, have extended producer responsibility programs.

Plastic is a material that is used more for consumer goods, particularly for food and health and beauty products. The primary purpose of packaging and containers is to preserve and protect the product. Packaging represents 5% of product-related waste. In the case of poor production or preservation of a product, the percentage that ends up in a landfill is 80%. Therefore, we shouldn't focus our ire on packaging so much as work to make it better.

I've been a consultant for 10 years. I work with private companies to replace environmentally harmful packaging with recyclable and recycled packaging.

Since the new regulations came into force in Quebec in 2022, product recycling and upgrading rates have been quite high. Producers who market packaged goods have an obligation to contribute financially to the extended producer responsibility system. In addition, packaging materials for all their products must be recyclable or recycled at a rate of up to 85%. That's a high percentage.

The way I see it, we have to work at all stages of the value chain. Materials suppliers, manufacturers, processors and companies marketing products cannot work alone. Everybody needs to be at the table to make the system work. The materials supplier must be responsible for what it sells to the processor or manufacturer. We're talking about plastics today, but it could be other materials. That responsibility is passed on to the retailer selling the products. Without this partnership, we can talk about it endlessly, but nothing will change. Producers are still investing thousands of dollars in the extended producer responsibility system, so everyone has to work together.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you very much for your opening comments.

We'll now turn to our first round of questions. Please be sure to indicate to whom your questions are directed.

We will start off with MP Viersen for six minutes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Fisher, I was intrigued by your testimony.

How does your organization deal with the microplastics the Great Lakes interact with? Do you measure that far down? Do you have opinions about that? I'm interested in your opinions.

[Mark Fisher]

It's a great question.

Today, through the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup, which we run with Pollution Probe—one of Canada's oldest environmental charities—we have a series of innovative capture and cleanup technologies that we operate in Ontario and across a number of states. Working with local partners, we are collecting debris on beaches and in our waterways, particularly our marinas, in order to characterize what we're finding. It's plastic, and typically smaller plastic—cigarette butts, predominantly, and broken-down food and beverage materials that have been in the environment for a long time. By collecting that and understanding the types and sizes, we can work to understand the different sources and pathways. How did it end up there? It is predominantly public litter. I will say that.

That data is extremely helpful in having conversations with decision-makers like you about how to stop this from a policy standpoint, and how to engage with coastal communities in order to let them know the impact that this type of behaviour and those activities are having on our environment and the Great Lakes.

There is certainly a lot more research happening today, through our higher education institutions, about the scale and scope of microplastics and microfibres in the Great Lakes. As said in a previous testimony, we're trying to understand the environmental and human health impacts of that material when it finds its way into, let's say, drinking water or wildlife.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

You're not trying to recover microplastics or anything like that.

[Mark Fisher]

We'll recover it as much as we can through our capture and cleanup technologies. However, once it's in the Great Lakes themselves, it's extremely difficult to capture microplastics effectively.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

You're not doing any work on nanoparticles or anything like that.

[Mark Fisher]

No. I would say that most of the research is being done by our higher education institutions at this time.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Okay.

Sustainable Strat, are you doing any research around, or have opinions about, how we can divert from using plastic? Do you have an idea?

We keep hearing that the medical and research worlds can't do without plastic, but for some of the other containers and things like that, we could probably.... We just heard that a bamboo or palm leaf could be used as a disposable plate.

Do you have any other examples? For places where we use plastic exclusively today, how can we return to something that isn't plastic?

[Marina Pietrosel]

In the work I do directly with businesses, customers, producers and manufacturers, we look at other materials—

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Can you hold for a moment, please?

[A voice]

I'm not getting any translation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Can you speak again, please? We'll see if he can hear.

[Marina Pietrosel]

I've been working directly with companies, whether manufacturers, retailers or producers, for a good year now, ever since the extended producer responsibility program imposed fairly high recycling rates. We've started working on eco-design, new materials and single-material products.

We have explored the degradable side of materials a lot, because it must be said that there is no such thing as biodegradability. Materials made from bamboo, palm fronds and other similar materials are not at all up to par. From a food preservation perspective, we don't yet have evidence that these materials can actually be effective. We're talking about products that consumers will eat. These materials need to be able to preserve them. We're not there yet. I've done a lot of testing through composting, recycling and other methods, and so far the new materials, as they're called, have been utterly inconclusive.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

For the Selkirk STAC—that's a neat acronym—around the synergies you've been developing in your region, how scalable is what you're doing there? Is it something that you would say should be repeated across the country, or is it pretty unique and you just have stick to building out what you have going on there right now?

[Jason Taylor]

This is a long-term project for us, but we definitely would love to see this scaled out. I think that's a beautiful part of being in the TAC network, the technology access network. There are 67 of us across Canada, and this could be repeated easily in other advanced manufacturing TACs.

The KORE initiative, the Kootenay Outdoor Recreation Enterprise Initiative, started a conference in Kimberley today that is lasting for the next couple of days. The recycling and circular economy is definitely a big part of that, because so many of the parts for mountain bikes or ski boots, etc., are plastic. What happens when they've passed their usability? That's definitely a huge opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

We'll now turn to MP Chen for six minutes, please.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Taylor.

You were speaking earlier and ran out of time. I'd like to give you the opportunity to finish your testimony.

[Jason Taylor]

Right.

One of the other organizations I'd like to mention in this region is the Lower Columbia Initiatives Corporation. They have worked with a group of us to really promote circular economy opportunities in this region and elsewhere.

The LCIC, first in the Metal Tech Alley, and then, of course, in the circular economy opportunities, has really brought us together and has given us a vision or a hope to, again, promote industry collaboration with education and research and the community. It's been a great opportunity.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Your organization, STAC, is engaging with organizations that are both small and large in creating awareness and educating on the circular economy. Why is it important to work not just with large industry players but also with small and medium-sized enterprises?

[Jason Taylor]

If these small companies start properly, if they start utilizing or thinking about circularity, design for reuse or design for alternatives to utilizing plastic, or utilizing a plastic that is recyclable or comes from a better source than just virgin material, we hope that during the design process or initial start-up, they use the right techniques.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

I was very intrigued to hear your example about recycling car batteries and repurposing that recycled plastic into pellets and shipping it for reuse in car batteries across the country, but you did mention the importance of developing more local partnerships. Could you share with us why it is important to create circular economies that are localized?

[Jason Taylor]

If I or KC Recycling or any company doesn't have to ship a product across the world.... Shipping is a major consumer and producer of greenhouse gases, of course. If we can make what we need here and reduce the need for shipping or bringing everything from another country, that gives us the power to be sustainable, for sure.

A pallet is a perfect example. If we don't need to have a product shipped from here to somewhere else on a pallet that is made of plastic that we've bought from somewhere else, we can make that pallet here and ship it out. That pallet is made from car batteries or from recycled polypropylene from car batteries.

There are so many other examples of those types of opportunities, not just with car battery plastics, but with any other type of plastic that fits into that recyclability framework.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

It sounds like you're certainly creating models that can be used in other parts of the country.

Another area you touched on was the work you're doing with students in ensuring that the concept of a circular economy is embedded in different areas of the curriculum. Could you give examples of your work in this project and how you hope to transform the future thinkers and the innovators in the emerging economies ahead?

[Jason Taylor]

Before I became the department head of the TAC here, I developed this digital fabrication and design program. A key hope when we designed the curriculum was that every piece of it has the thought process of, “Why? What material? Is there a better material? Is there something we can think about in design for reuse, recycling or recirculation?” For the manufacturing processes as well, we ask, “Is it clean? What are we doing with the waste?” It's all of those types of things.

I think that this core concept is a really cool opportunity to be able to share and export to other educational institutions.