Good news is rare in the environmental field, but the federal government’s announcement to ban six very common plastic products, such as straws and utensils, has raised some hope. Although this is good news in itself, this measure does not at all attack the heart of the problem: single use.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Basically, single use is packaging or a product that is used only once. As soon as used, immediately no longer usable. We have many examples of this around us on a daily basis, particularly in the food sector.
And the big problem with single use is that it has impacts far beyond the material used. And with the ban announced by Ottawa last week, there will be a shift from banned plastic single-use items to items made with other materials, such as wood or cardboard, for example.
But isn’t that an improvement?
Yes, because plastic is a very problematic material which takes a long time to degrade in the environment, which can have harmful effects on health and which is also directly linked to the fossil industry, since it is made from oil.
But does this government announcement have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of material that will be sent to landfill or thrown into the wild in Canada?
The answer is unfortunately “no, not so much”.
Regardless of the single-use product, whether plastic, recyclable, compostable or biodegradable… it takes resources to produce it, transport it and manage it at the end of its life.
The government’s announcement will therefore not significantly reduce the pressure exerted on the exploitation and waste of these resources. This is what we have to tackle.
Take for example the bamboo fork that will eventually replace the plastic fork to eat our poutine. Even if it composted as planned (which is not always the case), it would have taken a lot of resources and energy to harvest said bamboo (most likely in Asia, so not very locally), machine it into shape of fork, transport it by boat and by truck so that we can finally use it to eat our poutine here.
What if the restaurant instead provided me with a metal fork that would be washed between each customer and used hundreds, even thousands, of times? And if I take said poutine to go, would it be so terrible to drag in the glove compartment of my car a small “set” of reusable utensils for such occasions?
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Reusable coffee cups with QR code
Get out of the “ready-to-throw”
Rather than piecemeal bans, the government should therefore propose an overall vision to get us collectively out of the “ready-to-throw”, which should be reserved for contexts as rare as they are specific, such as in the medical field for example. . And even then, alternatives also exist.
We need a national strategy to reduce single use: a strategy with funding that would enable the deployment of reusable alternatives.
This strategy must encourage the change of our habits, not only the material of the things that we often end up throwing away.
The government needs to make this change simple and affordable for all of us.
In this regard, the solutions to get out of this cycle of waste are known: reusable beverage containers and food containers. Several companies and small organizations have developed solutions in Quebec: think of the coffee cup La tasse, the lunch boxes of Retournzy, the returnable milk bottles or even the good old brown beer bottles of standard format, which are reused 15 to 25 times. Now, these solutions must be implemented and deployed on a large scale, and to achieve this, it takes the means of our ambitions. Re-use is a big part of the solution to get out of ready-to-throw, and it must be financed accordingly.
So let’s stop seeing the issue of plastic through the hole of a straw – whether biodegradable or not – and broaden our perspective to tackle the problem at its source. We are capable of it and we are ready and ready for this change.