Ottawa’s ban on manufacturing and importing for sale certain plastic items, including grocery bags and straws, has come into effect in Canada.
As of Tuesday, businesses can no longer produce or import various categories of single-use plastic into Canada: shopping bags, utensils, stir sticks, straws and take-out food containers, including those made from polystyrene foam.
A year later, it will be illegal to sell these products.
Next June, the ban on manufacture and importation will extend to rings used to be placed around drinks in order to transport several at a time. Their sale will then be prohibited from the summer of 2024.
The federal government estimates that its single-use plastics regulations will eliminate 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and the equivalent of more than one million filled garbage bags.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in 2019 that a ban would come into effect by 2021, but it took another year for the government to find a regulatory framework to make it happen.
Statistics released last month suggested that Canadians were already reducing the use of items such as straws and plastic bags before the regulations were passed.
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