MARIA TOEWS
Sentinel-Review
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Plastic grocery store bags could soon be a thing of the past in Canada, which is welcome news to Oxford County’s public works director.
Annually, roughly two per cent of household waste and 13 per cent of industrial, commercial and institutional waste consists of non-recyclable plastics that end up in landfill.
But with the federal government planning to ban several single-use plastics, including grocery bags, in the coming couple of years, landfill operators won’t have to worry as much about “these problematic materials.”
Over the next couple of years, several single-use plastics will be banned by the federal government, including plastic grocery bags.
“(They are) very difficult materials to reprocess,” county public works director David Simpson said. “They usually end up either in recycling bins and then go to processing centres, which simply can’t repurpose them, and then they ultimately end up in landfills.”
In late December, the federal government drafted a plan to reduce single-use plastics under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act that has since sent out for public consultation.
The proposed regulations will ban plastic checkout bags, cutlery, food service ware, ring carriers, stir sticks and straws. Furthermore, regulatory standards will be established to increase the use of recycled content in plastic products up to 50 per cent by 2030.
Oxford County has already taken a look at these regulations and put together a report with comments and a resolution that will be presented to council on Wednesday.
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“If they’re banned, then they come out of the material stream and potentially no longer become problematic,” Simpson said.
If county council endorses this report at Wednesday’s meeting, staff will then put together final comments and forward a final resolution to Environment and Climate Change Canada by March 5.
Simpson suggested enforcement will be the most challenging aspect of this ban but noted it will be up to the federal government to implement, not municipalities.
“I think, like any ban, it all comes down to enforcement. You’re going to have those manufacturers and those consumers, and even retailers for that matter, that may or may not support the ban,” he said.
The submission for council was prepared by staff at the county, the City of Woodstock, the Township of South-West Oxford and Zero Waste Oxford.
As part of its public consultation, the federal government will look at these submissions and then finalize the regulations, likely bringing the ban into effect by as early as late 2022 with a one-year transition period.
“I think it is quite an aggressive timeline to expect that they’ll get this initiative along that far,” said Simpson.
While it’s good for the government to have a target in mind , Simpson said local communities will most likely not meet that one-year timeline.
“I think with everyone spinning out of the effects of COVID, especially in respect to the businesses in our local communities, it might take a little bit longer than late 2022 to really help get this off the ground.”
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However, he did say the proposed ban on these materials is an initiative worthy of support.
“The mere fact that we are looking at a ban to really force the consumers not to use the products so that these materials don’t end up in a landfill is beneficial.”
Although consumers and retailers will be both impacted, Simpson said the ban will affect manufacturers the most.
“It really helps to put some pressure on the manufacturers who are responsible for the full life-cycle of those materials,” he said. “Anything and all things that we can do to get materials out of the waste stream that don’t end up in landfill is definitely a good thing.”