Stephen: Federal government announces country-wide ban on single use plastics

Federal Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault announced a country-wide ban on some single-use plastics in a press conference Monday. The ban effects the manufacture, sale, and use of plastic bags, plastic straws, single-use cutlery, stir sticks, and beverage rings and will begin rolling out by the end of the year. Plastic bags and takeout containers will be banned from imports and use by the end of 2022, with the sale of these products to be banned by the end of 2023, and the export to be banned by 2025. Some notable exceptions are flexible straws that aid those with disabilities and juice-boxes with disposable straws, which will not be banned until 2024.

Federal data shows that, in 2019, 15.5 billion plastic grocery bags, 4.5 billion pieces of plastic cutlery, three billion stir sticks, 5.8 billion straws, 183 million six-pack rings and 805 million takeout containers were sold in Canada. Just one tenth of plastic waste in Canada is recycled, according to a study by Deloitte. A spokesperson for Greenpeace said that more needs to be done, and that the items listed in this wave of bans only makes about 5 percent of plastic waste produced in our country.