Ban on bags?
Plastic waste sparks spirited debate at Halifax Regional Municipality council chambers.
Halifax Regional Municipality could play a leading role in the war on plastic waste.
A spirited debate in council chambers Tuesday about what that role could be turned into a war of words.
“Our impact on the environment can be limited or it can be quite great,” said Coun. Tony Mancini, chairman of the city’s environment committee, as he introduced a motion that could eventually lead to the banning of plastic grocery bags. Mancini asked solid waste manager Matt Kelliher if staff could return to the committee with a draft bylaw banning single-use plastic bags.
The issue came to the fore at year’s end with a decision by China, which had been importing about half of the world’s recyclables, to no longer accept film plastics. Film plastics include items like plastic shopping bags, the wrap around toilet paper and paper towels, and the wrappings for packages of water bottles, pop bottles and juice cans.
Municipalities were left to scramble to try to secure other markets for the film plastics. In Halifax Regional Municipality, some 300 tonnes of the film plastics stored outside of a recycling facility became contaminated and could not be moved to any recycler. The city made arrangements to move some of it to a landfill outside of the province and the Environment Department two weeks ago relaxed regulations banning plastics in provincial landfills to allow HRM the option of landfilling some of the contaminated plastics.
The problem prompted a meeting with Environment Minister Iain Rankin and all the municipalities, who were also affected by the Chinese decision.
Mancini revamped a bag-banning motion Tuesday that he had earlier taken to council.
Mark Butler of the Ecology Action Centre said before the heated plastics debate kicked into gear that HRM is in a unique position.
“I’m reminded of the pesticide bylaw,” Butler said. “Halifax got out in front of the province and other municipalities and eventually everybody followed suit.”
“I think if they led, I think it would encourage the province and other municipalities to do the same,” he said of a possible plastic bag bylaw. “If enough municipalities lead, there will be no option for the province but to follow suit.”
But many of the councillors were not eager to lead the way with a ban and some wondered where the bylaw idea came from, saying it was not part of Tuesday’s motion. Bill Karsten, councillor for Portland-east Woodland in Dartmouth and a member of the environment committee, said Mancini did not follow the committee’s recommendation.
“I don’t like to be undermined,” Karsten said, adding that the unanimous motion that came from the committee meeting was to approach the province about a provincial plastic bag ban.
Karsten said the ban idea is premature and Coun. Steve Streatch agreed.
“I feel we’re moving pretty fast here,” said Streatch, councillor for Waverley and Fall River. “Slowly and surely I’m coming around to recycle and reuse, but I’m not prepared to jump on the environmentalist bandwagon this time without further information.
“There have got to be other technologies. It can’t be as black and white as ban or status quo or