Science and Research Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

Now we will turn to MP Kelloway for six minutes.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Hello, everyone, and thanks to the witnesses for coming in today.

My questions will be for Ms. St. Godard.

I'm particularly interested in the reuse program that aims to eliminate single-use plastic waste on a national basis. I'm wondering if you can describe and unpack more of what that program is.

Do you think you could point out to Canadians when we could expect to see this program active in stores?

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

Thanks for the question.

This is a program we've been working on as an organization in partnership with some leading grocery retailers for the better part of about two years now. I'm pleased to say that we are anticipating a launch in Ottawa. The pilot project will be focused in the city of Ottawa initially, tested and perfected, and then expanded across the country.

What makes this reuse experiment or pilot unique is that it has a collaborative approach. I spoke in my comments about our role as an organization in bringing otherwise competing entities together around a common good and a common interest, and this is exactly what we've done with the reuse project.

We worked with three grocers—Walmart Canada, Metro, and Sobeys and Farm Boy together under the Empire group—to identify a common set of reuse containers they can utilize in-store. They have autonomy in terms of decisions about where in-store they want to use those. In a place-based way, working with the City of Ottawa.... I might say that we were also funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada to run this pilot. With the support of all of these entities, we've worked and identified a catchment area in Ottawa where we'll be deploying these containers at six grocery locations. In fact, we have gone door to door at neighbouring restaurants to see if they want to share in the pilot. At this date, as of today, 11 of them have confirmed.

What we're trying to do is build a critical mass and provide containers as a service as opposed to containers as an asset. Each of the participating entities, be they grocers or restaurants, will share in the container use, the washing and sanitization services, the deployment of the containers and the logistics of moving them about in the system. As I mentioned, the launch date is October 17. I'm very much looking forward to seeing all of you with one of our reuse containers in your hands for lunch.

We'll be running the pilot for 12 months, collecting all of the data—both in terms of costs and environmental and social benefits as well as job creation—testing the existing ecosystem of service providers, and then growing the businesses in Ottawa and diversifying their services by onboarding them into this pilot.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Excellent. We'll need to have one of those pilots in Cape Breton, where I'm from.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

I would welcome that.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

As the kids say, we'll talk.

Just a few moments ago, you talked about reaching out to other businesses to get involved. We're talking about change, which can be very complex. It can be hard to get people on side with a new approach or process.

I'm curious about this: When you reached out to businesses, what was your pitch? I find, whether it's government policy on any level or just general change management, people need to understand the why. What was your “why” when you went to them?

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

It was slightly different, depending on who we were talking to.

The pitch was really informed by a year of research to understand where there were barriers. What were these barriers? Were they costs? Were they management? Were they understanding? Were they education? Were they culture? Were they language? There were a variety of different barriers that we identified. We didn't look just to the Canadian context. We looked around the world. We plucked, if you will, the “best in show” attributes of working reuse programs and we combined them.

The pitch, to answer your question directly, was really distilled down to a couple of things.

First, there was a misunderstanding that reusing containers was harder or required more effort, more cost or more management than having single-use. We were able to dispel that myth by bringing real-time, time-bound studies and demonstrating, by working with each restaurant and grocery store independently, that there really wasn't much change. A container is a container. That's one of the myths we've had to dispel.

The second was absolutely cost. Again, unique to our pilot, nowhere is there any geography like Canada, where we're so disaggregated. It's a very large geography. It's very expensive for a grocery store, given it has locations across the country, to create a program by itself. It would have to move these containers between its locations, and it gets quite complicated and quite expensive.

The availability for it to pay a subscription or membership fee to get access to this program made it much more cost-effective. It eliminated its need to purchase single-use containers. Most importantly, it also got to subtract the reuse containers it was able to deploy from its extended producer responsibility fees, because reuse does not attract an EPR cost. When it combined those elements of cost savings, it was a bit of a no-brainer.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We'll now turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas, for six minutes, please.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is a pleasure for me to welcome the witnesses who are joining us today for this important study based on science and research.

Ms. St. Godard, my question may seem simple, but it is very important. Does the management of plastic products have a positive impact on environmental protection and public health?

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

Can I just repeat the question for context and understanding? I understand the question to be whether it is my opinion that a manufacturer of a plastic product makes a contribution to the social and economic well-being of Canada.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Exactly.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

Of course, if they are manufacturing in a Canadian context, they are probably employing people. I imagine there is a job benefit and a social benefit to doing that.

The reality is that we don't manufacture many plastic anything in Canada. The increasing single-use plastics in the Canadian market do very little for the Canadian economy. Of the 400 billion tonnes of plastics produced globally, we're at less than 6% in terms of what we manufacture here. We have much more opportunity to grow our green economy by improving our ability to innovate around collection and recycling and by designing, with our innovation, more recycled content of plastics in products and packaging.

I think we learned very clearly in the pandemic, when we saw single-use plastic use triple, that having long supply chains can make us quite vulnerable. There is an opportunity for us to look domestically and shorten our supply chains in terms of production. Also, rather than going through all the expense and effort of our citizens collecting and then shipping this raw material to other parts around the world, only to buy products that actually have these recyclables as part of the makeup, we'd be better off trying to find ways of creating and shortening the supply chain and creating an economy of plastics right here.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That answers my question. That's a very good short answer. I know it's a complex issue, so thank you for that.

Has the organization you represent been consulted by the federal government on the Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, including the legislative amendment on the single‑use plastic ban imposed by the federal government in recent years?

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

We were very actively involved in the development and responded to each of the tools within that policy package. I do personally, actually, sit on the advisory committee to the minister as it relates to the plastic policy.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

I would like you to share your views based on science and research. Some companies are currently taking legal action. Since this is in the public domain, I can name them: Dow Chemical, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals, whose representatives came to testify before the committee to present a completely different point of view.

When parliamentarians wonder about the toxicity of plastic, I wonder if they have ever read a scientific study on the subject. Maybe they just don't believe in science. I would like to hear your opinion on that, since you are a scientific expert for the Circular Innovation Council, an environmental group.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

I don't think there's any dispute related to plastic discards and plastics pollution leaking into our environment. I know there's a growing body of research that is trying to quantify its effects in terms of not only what it's doing to our environment, but also what it's doing to wildlife and to human health. That body of research is growing. There's really been no dispute, even in the early research, that there are grave negative impacts as it relates to microplastics and other chemical compounds that are part of fossil fuel-based plastics in the system. I think that's undisputable.

Unfortunately, the rate of production of plastics continues to grow, and our rate of recycling is declining. We're headed in the wrong direction. There's no question about that. It's pretty self-evident why some of the chemical companies or other manufacturers might have more interest in trying to support recycling efforts than they would reduction efforts in terms of self-efficacy and self-continuation. We have a long way to go on the recycling side, but we will not recycle our way out of this problem. I think you've heard this at committee several times. No research or science will tell us that. We know this already.

This is going to be a combination of eliminating, reducing, swapping out plastic materials to other alternatives and, of course, expanding recycling.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

I would like to talk about recycling and the circular economy, because we have relevant data from 2016. According to that data, in Canada, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, 86% ends up in landfills, 4% is incinerated and 1% winds up in the environment. I don't think those numbers speak to a circular economy.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

Unquestionably, you're quite right. What's not measurable and where we're starting to measure are the microplastics. It's a very difficult thing to quantify. That's a whole other impact that really deserves research and time and money.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's our time.

Now we will turn to MP Ashton for six minutes, please.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you very much.

My first question is for Ms. St. Godard. If you could speak to us a bit about what you found, which incentive systems work best when it comes to recycling?

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

I think I would agree with my other friendly witness that deposit return systems have proven to be successful. The beer industry is one great example. For almost 100 years, they've been able to recover all of their containers, irrespective of material type, to somewhere between 85% and 95%. It's just really stood the test of time. They have an integrated system where they use reverse logistics to drop off new product and to take back containers.

I might mention that a portion of what they've been able to do so successfully, which has an economic opportunity as well, is to refill. Deposit return places a financial bounty. It creates a value where there might not be any. I spoke of the low value of plastic discards, and that's why we have disparity in the system and why we can't incent recycling. It places a financial bounty or a reward, if you will, on the consumer to do their part, in this case, using the beer example, to take it back when they pick up a new case of beer.

We know that financial incentives are very impactful. We also know that there is some evidence that municipalities have tried other disincentives with mechanisms like clear bags at the end of the curb. It might show, if there's some inspection, if you will, which is very basic, there are too many recyclables in the garbage bag and they give you a little sticker sometimes. It's not a pleasant sticker; it says that you need to try harder. There are disincentives that are placed there as well.

I think, between the two, I would certainly say that we need to really exploit and to take seriously the mechanisms in the market that have worked. There is no question that deposit return is our best result in that regard. I do think that extended producer responsibility is also another incentive, if you will. Making producers pay and internalizing those costs builds incentive and motivation for them to be able to go back and redesign improved packaging and products.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you for sharing that.

I also wanted to ask about your organization's work and perhaps about work that you're aware of when it comes to making recycling realistic in northern and indigenous communities. I am joining you from northern Canada, of course, from my constituency.

Many people in indigenous and northern communities want to recycle and don't have a realistic option to do so. Many, particularly in remote communities, have very small landfills. Due to chronic federal underfunding, dealing with those landfills is anywhere from a headache to full on hazardous.

I'm wondering if you could share how important it is to get a handle on ensuring recycling is available to all Canadians, frankly, including in northern and indigenous communities.

[Jo-Anne St. Godard]

Yes. It's such a critical question. Thank you for that.

Personally, I can say that I lived in Churchill, Manitoba, for three years, so I know a bit about living in the north.

I know consumption—

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

You know a lot.