Environment committee  I will answer the question in three parts. The first is very short. We must not claim that commonly used plastics are made of toxic material. This is simply because the word “toxic” has a definition similar to those used in normalized categories and properties. If you look at the WHMIS, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System, you will see a category of toxic material used in the workplace that describes exactly what the toxic properties are.

Environment committee  The best example is table salt, NaCl, that all of you use. However, I can kill you with NaCl. It's just a matter of how much you use. Toxicity is all about dosage. By dosage, we mean the concentration and the duration of the exposure. I am currently breathing 418 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere here.

Environment committee  Yes, social enterprises certainly have a role to play. With masks, one of the micro-businesses that I am aware of uses groups that provide work for persons with disabilities. It means that it can condition and sort the material. That company currently does the recovery with small suppliers, such as small schools and certainly dentists' offices.

Environment committee  The word bioplastics causes a lot of confusion. Because the word starts with the prefix “bio”, people believe that bioplastics are biodegradable. That is not the case at all. We can manufacture any kind of permanent plastic, like the plastics we all know, using existing biomass material instead of fossil material.

Environment committee  Yes, of course. We tried to start in a place that would be sensitive to action. We found that sensitivity in a university. Actually, it's two institutions: the Université de Sherbrooke and the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke. In them, we succeeded in establishing a form of mask recovery because of the pressure from student and other groups.

Environment committee  My thanks to all the committee members. We have a very special interest. When I say “we”, I am talking about the applied research group of which I am a member, the Technology Transfer Centre for Industrial Ecology.

Environment committee  No, I'm in a broadcasting studio that we use for distance learning at the university. Can you hear me well enough?

Environment committee  Thank you very much. Can you see that I tried to obey all the rules? I even put on a jacket and tie so that I could attend this meeting.

Environment committee  Our angle of attack is a little different from what the other participants are describing or what I'm reading. Our organization is an applied research centre. We work together with companies on the end of life of materials. However, we don't work directly with consumers; we take no position on how things work in society at large.

Environment committee  I'm here. I had trouble connecting to you.