Ban on plastic grocery bags is long overdue

Goodbye single-use plastic grocery bags and good riddance.

For the sake of this planet, Canadians need to use less plastic and recycle more of it — as soon as humanly possible.

The havoc this substance is playing with the Earth’s air, water and land is too scientifically irrefutable to ignore. And with the world generating and discarding more plastic than ever, the moral as well as practical imperative for this country to act expeditiously could hardly be more obvious.

With this in mind, the plan announced Wednesday by the federal government to ban six plastic items by the end of 2021 should not only be applauded, it should be seen for what it is — an overdue baby-step in a long but necessary journey to environmental sustainability. Spare us any exclamations of shock that the end is nigh for single-use plastic grocery bags, straws, cutlery, stir sticks, six-pack rings and certain types of takeout containers. This is exactly what Justin Trudeau’s Liberals promised before being returned to power in last year’s federal election.

Moreover, as federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson explained this week, these six items are hard to recycle, too often wind up in the environment and can be replaced by readily available alternatives. It shouldn’t be a sacrifice to get rid of them altogether.

Indeed, many environmental groups, such as Greenpeace Canada, correctly insist this is only the beginning of what the Liberals must do to hit the government’s target of zero plastic waste by 2030. While they didn’t make the headlines the bans did, the goals of setting tougher standards for recycling plastic products and making the manufacturers of plastics more responsible for what happens to them matter even more.

According to the federal government, Canadians toss out three million tonnes of plastic waste each year and only nine per cent of that gets recycled. In addition, about one third of the plastic used in this country is in single-use or short-lived products and packaging.

No one in this government denies how useful, indeed how essential, plastics can be in the world today. But Canadians don’t really need to rely on the estimated 15 billion plastic bags they use each year or the 57 million plastic straws they drink with daily. We’ve become addicted to this stuff and, as with all addictions, this one brings big problems.

Humans produce more than 380 million tonnes of plastic each year, eight million tonnes of which wind up in the planet’s oceans. As plastics break down in the seas, they have a life-threatening impact on the wildlife that consume them, including the fish that can end up on human dinner tables.

In addition, plastics originate as fossil fuels and contribute to climate change. When incinerated, as they are in many countries, they pollute the air we breathe. And they can contaminate the soil that grows the food we eat.

So, while the federal Liberals will undoubtedly experience push-back against their proposed bans, they should persevere. The true value of Ottawa’s campaign against plastics will be realized only when there’s a nationwide standard for recycling used plastics into new products and for Extended Producer Responsibility programs that force companies to manage the collection and recycling of the plastic waste they produce or sell.

That will happen only with the co-operation of the business community as well as provincial and municipal governments. Achieving that will be a bigger challenge then requiring Canadians to carry their groceries home in a paper or cloth bag.