Since December 2022, Canada has banned the manufacturing and import of certain single-use plastics. Among those items were things like checkout bags, cutlery, and straws.
Canadian environmental groups have since seen a shift in what types of garbage they collect from around the country. They’re hoping that another type of single-use plastic will be banned along with the rest of the previously-barred products.
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Harmful Single-Use Plastic Ban In Canada
According to a press release from the Government of Canada, the ban of harmful, single-use plastics over the next decade “will result in the estimated elimination of over 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution.” That is reportedly equivalent to over one million full garbage bags.
Currently, these single-use plastic products are part of the ban across Canada:
- checkout bags
- cutlery
- foodservice ware made from, or containing, problematic plastics that are hard to recycle
- stir sticks
- straws (with some exceptions)
Different Plastic, Still Littered
While the plastic ban the Government of Canada put into place has seen real change, Canadian environmental groups like ‘Don’t Mess with the Don’ have seen different kinds of litter being tossed into Canada’s waterways and ravines. According to a CTV interview with the group’s president Lawrence Warriner, there’s been a dramatic decrease of 99% in plastic bags being littered. But although there have been significant reductions in certain single-use plastics such as plastic bags, there are still many other types that are being left around.
This includes items like takeout cups and lids, as well as plastic bottles. Rochelle Byrne, the founder of ‘A Greener Future,’ says that she would like to see plastic bottles and coffee to-go cups gone “because they’re just endless.”
There have been some solutions pitched by people, such as Karen Wirsig, the senior program manager of Environmental Defence. She says that “a return system for cups would work. If [the companies] would work together on a takeout cup that we all could use, pay a deposit, return it anywhere… the companies get them back, wash them out and reuse them.”
