There are a lot of plastics in the oceans, and fishery stocks are being impacted, so you're not far from the issue when you're in the other committee.
We are in a better place than we were 10 to 20 years ago in Canada because of both the policies and the technologies used to sort and recycle. We're still far off from a full circular plastics economy, with only 8% to 9% of our plastics being recycled and about 40,000 tonnes of plastics leaked permanently into the environment each year. We're far off, but we're in a better place than we were.
The circular economy, in a sense, recognizes that the value of the products is so important that you need to keep them in the economy as long as possible through the reusing, refilling, repairing and refurbishing of the products. Then when you come to their real end of life, recycling puts the resource back in the economy. That's what we mean by a circular economy. You try to avoid the end of life. That's linked to the socio-economic aspect you were talking about.
Thank you for allowing me to finish my introductory remarks.