More plastic ends up as litter in our roadways, parks and public places than is recycled every year.
Most petroleum based single-use plastics take over 400 years to degrade, and are still detrimental to the environment as micro plastics.
Currently the onus is on individual Canadians to pay more for sustainable products, what if unsustainable, environmentally harmful that more often than not end up as litter were simply not an option?
There is more weight in plastic waste in our oceans than fish. 8 million tons added every year, and forecast to increase to 10 million tons/year by 2025 if we don’t do something now.
- Plastic waste is a growing concern in Calgary, Canada and the world,
- 5-12 million tons of plastic enter our oceans each year, its up to Canada to step up to our role as a world leader in tackling this problem
- 1/3 of all plastics in Canada are single use, the vast majority of which are non-recyclable and end up as litter or in landfills
We spend millions of dollars each year throwing out billions of dollars worth of plastic.
- The city of Calgary was forced to landfill 2,000 tons of recyclable plastics at a cost of $300,000 due to increasing costs of petroleum based plastic recycling in China
- Excessive landfill space is taken up by plastics, increasing costs of garbage pick up and landfill space allocation to municipal and provincial taxpayers
Solutions exist; they exist locally but need nation-wide measures.
- Reduce, then reuse, then recycle, both the previous conservative and liberal governments have relied on recycling as a Band-Aid fix for the plastics problem without addressing the most effective methods of reduction and longer product lifespans.
- Less than 11% of plastics in Canada are recycled. We pay to throw out the rest in landfills or ship to an increasingly expensive recycling industry overseas while 10% of plastic waste ends up as pollution: coffee cups along our streets, plastic bags in our alleyways and bags in our parks.
The Green Party is the only Federal Party with an established plan to phase out single-use plastics entirely by 2022.
- A Green government will establish a plastics lifecycle advisory group comprised of representatives from all stages of the plastic products life cycle to set guidelines in establishing biodegradability, recyclability and sustainability standards
- A Green government will set precautionary standards to ensure new materials are sustainable and hazard free to keep BPAs and yet unknown hazards materials safe from Canadians
- A Green government will by January 2022, ban the production, distribution and sale of all unnecessary, non-essential petroleum-based single use plastics
