Thank you for inviting me, Anthony Merante, the senior plastics campaigner on behalf of Oceana Canada, to speak about plastics recycling today.
Briefly, my knowledge of plastics stems from my 15-plus years experience in the fields of environmental science and environmental policy at both the national and the subnational levels.
Oceana is a science-based organization that focuses on the reduction of non-essential single-use plastics and the protection of our oceans. My remarks will focus on single-use plastics, their recyclability and associated pollution.
In 2023, Oceana published a landmark report entitled “Breaking the Plastic Cycle”, of which an electronic copy and physical copies are available. It outlined a road map to reduce Canada's plastic packaging waste by one-third through policy interventions that remove non-recyclables and increase recyclability and reuse of common products.
On the state of plastic pollution, Canada generates 4.3 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, while only 8% of that is mechanically recycled. From 2012 to 2019, the amount of plastics entering the Canadian marketplace rose by 20% to 6.1 million tonnes, which outpaced both economic growth and population growth. In 2019, packaging items such as bottles, containers and bags made up 37% of all plastic products manufactured for Canadian consumption.
The evidence is clear. We are over-plasticizing our lives with single-use, non-durable plastics. Our recycling system is broken and inefficient today. The combination of overproduction and Canada's transition away from collection and reuse systems to linear single-use disposal systems has resulted in a national pollution crisis.
On damages, it is the very durability of plastics, which is touted as an advantage, that lends to their extensive harm. Once plastics enter the environment, they never really go away. Slowly, plastic products break down into microplastics that persist for hundreds of years. In context, a plastic fork used for five to 10 minutes for a takeout meal may see the entire population of the planet turn over twice. The chance of that fork being recycled is next to none currently, but its odds of ending up in the environment are nearly guaranteed. Plastics are found in every corner of the planet, including Arctic sea ice, rain clouds and our food. Plastics and their chemicals are now being found in the major organs of the human body, with links to infertility, hormone disruption and diseases like cancers and Alzheimer's.
Single-use plastic packaging makes up over half of plastic waste annually, and the largest amounts are coming from our grocery stores, beverage bottles, food service ware, pallet wrap involved in shipping and transport, and the rapidly growing e-commerce sector. The leading causes of this waste generation are the loss of circular, returnable and refillable systems, specifically for non-alcoholic beverage and food containers; the use of plastic polymers like polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride that just do not mesh with our current infrastructure; material swapping of infinitely recyclable and refillable packaging like glass and metal for cheap and flexible plastics; the addition of colourful dyes, additives and chemicals to alter the appearance of plastics; and mixed materials on a single product that are discarded by consumers as a whole. As an example, pop bottles are made from PET, and their caps are made of polystyrene. The ribbons could be made of polypropylene, vinyl or polyester film, and the shrink wrap that is binding them is made of polyethylene.
It's estimated that 7.8 billion dollars' worth of plastics go to landfills annually. This plastic pollution is harming not only our environment but also our wallets.
The solutions are simple and clear: prohibit the manufacturing and sale of products that simply cannot be recycled, reused or refilled; standardize product design to eliminate non-recyclability and to enable circularity; and work with the largest players per sector to develop systems and products that are truly circular and that are not landfill- or incinerator-bound. Of note, 82% of Canadians support regulations like these, regardless of their voting history, and 80% of Canadians feel that it is the federal government's responsibility to lead the charge on plastics pollution. Currently, over 170 nations are developing international plastics regulations. This is a massive market study.
Lastly, advanced recycling, chemical recycling, pyrolysis and gasification are often cited as solutions to recycling the non-recyclable. However, these have been proven to fail when applied at scale and have been highly polluting. For example, the Enerkem biofuels centre in Edmonton is inoperable and was plagued with failures since its opening. These new forms of waste management are lobbied to governments, the public and decision-makers without transparent data and with unsubstantiated claims of success.
Plastics do have a place in our world, but that place is not our oceans.
I'm happy to stop there and take questions from members of the committee. Thank you.