Sherbrooke wants to develop a strategy to reduce single-use items

The City of Sherbrooke will develop a new strategy to reduce singleuse items such as grocery bags, cups, plastic utensils, Styrofoam containers and other to-go items, straws, and more, in collaboration with Commerce Sherbrooke and citizens, environmental groups, and experts.

Items with a very short lifespan have been a cause of worry for Sherbrooke residents, so a brainstorming workshop was held in April with members of the Environment committee. A temporary advisory committee was created by Commerce Sherbrooke and will be meeting in the next couple of months to follow up on the elaboration of a single-use item reduction strategy. It will include steps towards reducing plastic bags. Meetings with Commerce Sherbrooke’s dynamization project committees are also intended, as to include retailers in the process.

“We believe that working together with the different parties will lead us to propose a strategy that will answer to the population’s needs and which residents will endorse,” commented Karine Godbout, president of the Environment committee.

The single-use item reduction strategy should be implemented in 2020.

Banning plastic grocery bags

One of the reduction strategy’s first steps is already ongoing, as the City of Sherbrooke will develop a process that will ban the distribution of certain grocery bags in businesses to promote a behaviour change when it comes to plastic bag use.

The City of Sherbrooke will be working with Commerce Sherbrooke to properly assess retailers’ needs and concerns. The process will include a communication and sensitization campaign among those retailers as well.

“Every year in Quebec, over one billion single-use plastic grocery bags are used. These bags are too rarely disposed in recycling bins and highly contribute to the population’s ecological footprint. We want to keep up the pace with other Quebec municipalities by also banning these bags on our territory,” added Steve Lussier, Sherbrooke mayor.

The new regulation will affect the commercial distribution of plastic bags that have a thickness lower than 0,1 mm, that are oxo-degradable, oxobiodegradable, and oxo-fragmentable, biodegradable bags, and compostable bags. However, a few exceptions will be made for plastic covers used during cleaning services and packaging bags used exclusively for hygienic reasons to transport food. The Record welcomes your letters to the editor. Please limit your letters to 300 words. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity, legality and taste. Please ensure there is a phone number or email where you can be reached, to confirm authorship and current town/city of residence. Names will not be withheld but the address and phone number of the writer are not published, except by request.

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