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Environment committee Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting Food and Consumer Products of Canada to appear before you today. We are pleased to be able to contribute to this important and timely study on the management of waste in Canada. While we know you are studying different areas, our remarks
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee That's a great question. Everyone is a little different. North America doesn't have these types of legislated EPR programs. A lot of them are doing it the way we used to do it. As you know, whether or not there is a legislative program, you're getting recycling services. Local g
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee At FCPC we tend to focus a lot on recycling because of these legislative programs. So it does force you to say, wait a minute, let's step back. As I mentioned in my remarks, I personally believe that focusing just on recycling, as these programs tend to do, takes away from other
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee A couple of years ago at FCPC, we surveyed our members. Again, the focus has always been recycling programs but we took a step back and we surveyed them on what they were doing to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage and water. Were they tracking, did they have goals in place
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee Again, that's a really good point. I think we do need to consider geography and that each province is different. You can understand each province having their own “made in their province” solution or program. I guess where we are coming from is that each province, each government
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee You hit on two things there. The plastic bag is a good example of how important the consumers' role is. You saw a tremendous consumer behaviour change in terms of their being incentivized to not take a plastic bag. To your question specifically about resistance to reducing pack
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee Are you talking about the bottle deposit return program that exists in some of the provinces?
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee To be honest with you, I'm not that familiar with the beverage side of things, especially the tax and the bottle deposit return system. There's another association, the Canadian Beverage Association, that is more knowledgeable in that area. I'd be happy to follow up with you afte
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee I didn't know that.
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee I'm not sure if I'm the best person to answer because there are other recyclers out there who will have more data than I would on that particular issue. As a general rule of thumb for packaging recycling in metropolitan areas where you're seeing the sale of material, it's cheaper
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee The recent decline in commodity markets definitely negatively impacts the recycling programs. Businesses pay fees to fund these programs. They are developed based on the cost of how to recycle the material, the cost of collection and processing, and then they're offset by the com
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee The clear environmental result, just to start on the qualitative, would be not having to use virgin materials, not having to go back to the earth's resources whether it's oil for plastic, things like that, and just using recycled materials over and over again in making new materi
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee Maybe five, six, or seven years ago there was more competition in this regard. But I think there was a shift in thought several years ago, starting with a couple of the leading retailers and manufacturers that recognized environmental sustainability wasn't something to have a com
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee Unfortunately, I don't have that information, but I can try to get it and follow up with the committee later.
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan
Environment committee Yes. At FCPC we have a lot of member committees where we join together and share information, but nothing in terms of competitive information or anything like that. There is transparency in what members are doing to change their packaging, to reduce it. There have been some good
October 20th, 2014Committee meeting
Rachel Kagan