Environment committee  I think it was this: there's been a recent study on food waste and where food waste happens along the entire supply chain, from farmers to consumers.

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

Environment committee  Unfortunately, I don't have that information, but I can try to get it and follow up with the committee later.

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

Environment committee  No, Apple is not. I believe it's a member of Electronics Product Stewardship Canada. Our members are only food and consumer product companies, companies such as Heinz, Frito-Lay, Unilever, and Pepsi.

Environment committee  Are you talking about the bottle deposit return program that exists in some of the provinces?

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

Environment committee  I didn't know that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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