Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me the time to represent my viewpoints on this critically important subject. I see three key gaps in the proposed CEPA legislation. The first one is that plastics are not toxic, especially when the alternatives are considered. The second one is

Environment committee  I'm just wrapping up. I'll just take a few seconds on the last couple of points. Fundamentally, plastics have the lowest carbon footprint and recycle well relative to the alternatives. Finally, I think in the time it's taken so far in the last year and a half to debate this,

Environment committee  The only key points I wanted to make were around the alternatives. I think everyone here agrees that keeping plastics out of the environment is the right issue. The fundamental concept I wanted to get across is to say that if we move to an alternative material, let's make sure

Environment committee  Absolutely, and because we're a global company, we have the opportunity to work around the world with various countries. I'll talk about Germany and Norway, because they're the gold standard in the collection and reuse of plastics today. Both countries claim and deliver a 97% re

Environment committee  I can tell you right away what did happen. A company that's been recycling PET bottles for more than 10 years and producing 100% recycled containers had a plan to introduce a new recyclable food service container and put a recycling plant up for it. They were also putting a bag r

Environment committee  Another key thing, which I know a lot of people aren't thinking about, is the medical devices industry. When I mentioned the point that 73% of medical devices use plastic, and we've just gone through a pandemic, Canada is almost wholly dependent on foreign nations for the supply

Environment committee  Perfect.

Environment committee  We can handle up to 100%. There are three fundamental technologies for recycling plastic in use worldwide: mechanical recycling, chemical recycling and waste-to-energy. All are developed. All of them we are capable of producing. As I mentioned, one customer has been producing con

Environment committee  The new EU regulations, which will take effect by the end of 2024, are much more aggressive than what we have here. They've followed that framework that I talked about earlier, imposing a higher percentage of recycled content across all products and mandating tethered closures so

Environment committee  Absolutely. You have to get the brands that want to deliver the product together with the people producing and recycling it.

Environment committee  It was more to the extent of the definition being appropriate and singling out plastics [Technical difficulty—Editor] 34 million tonnes of municipal waste per year, and plastic packaging, which seems to be a big part of this dialogue, represents 5% of that. As I mentioned earli

Environment committee  Over the course of last year we hired a professional polling company also, so we did our own poll, and we introduced information. You're correct that initially the response to plastics was negative. We introduced two fundamental concepts to that same group of people going throu

Environment committee  I'm against the designation.

Environment committee  Absolutely, there is. I think you may be aware of the fact that already the U.S. has cited concerns over trade today and— [Technical difficulty—Editor] Something is going on there.

Environment committee  I'll try again. So yes— [Technical difficulty—Editor] Will I try to speak over that and just keep going?