:
Okay. That allows us to move forward with the first meeting of our plastics study.
I see some witnesses who are familiar to us. They've been here recently, so they, and I imagine all the other witnesses, know the routine. We ask you to remain on mute until it is your turn to speak. That's essentially it. It's pretty much common sense, but it's worth mentioning.
Of course, you can speak in either official language and you have three options to listen—the floor feed, the English interpretation and the French interpretation.
We have with us today Dr. Chelsea Rochman from the University of Toronto. From Canada Plastics Pact, we have George Roter and Usman Valiante. From the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, we have Mr. Masterson, who is familiar to us, and Ms. Elena Mantagaris, who is also familiar to us. From Husky Injection Molding Systems, we have Mr. John Galt. Finally, from RECYC-QUÉBEC, we have Madame Sophie Langlois-Blouin.
Each group of witnesses has five minutes to present. We should be able to get three rounds in. If not, if it's a question of another five minutes, which I don't anticipate it will be, we'll just go to 5:35 or 5:40 at the latest. However, I don't think that will be a problem. I think we'll finish on time.
We'll start with Dr. Rochman for five minutes, please.
:
Thank you so much for inviting me to present to this committee. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to share my expertise and facilitate the use of scientific evidence in forming policy.
My name is Dr. Chelsea Rochman. I'm a professor in ecology at the University of Toronto. My research program is globally known for work on method development, contamination of microplastics in the environment, exposure to wildlife and humans, and ecological effects. We study plastic debris across the world, including locally in the Great Lakes, at the IISD Experimental Lakes Area, and in the Canadian Arctic.
Currently I am the scientific delegate to Canada for the UNE working group on plastic pollution. I'm also advising ECCC on the addition of plastic as a subindicator of Great Lakes health under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. I'm leading an international working group in California to advise on a monitoring method and a threshold for risk in both wildlife and humans relevant to microplastics.
Today I want to speak specifically to plastic waste and single-use plastic items, followed by commenting on the negative consequences of plastic pollution in general.
In a recent study, we estimated that 24 million to 34 million tonnes of plastic waste was emitted into aquatic ecosystems in 2020. If we continue business as usual, that number may triple by 2030. There's no time to waste. Unless growth in plastic production and use is halted, a fundamental transformation of the plastic economy is essential. We need to shift to a circular economy, where end-of-life plastic products are valued rather than turned to waste. Because of this, I support goals under the Canada-wide strategy on zero plastic waste and the proposal to manage plastics under CEPA. I was pleased to see Canada adopt a truly integrated approach with policies relevant to managing single-use plastics, establishing performance standards and ensuring end-of-life responsibility.
Each of these pathways is important, including the reduction in our reliance on unnecessary single-use plastics in order to bend our linear plastic economy toward a more circular one. Reducing single-use plastics that are common environmental pollutants, that are not reusable or recyclable and that have a substitution, is an important part of this transition. I applaud the decision to ban certain single-use plastics as early as this year.
I also agree with each item on the list. This is because these items are commonly found in the environment, are not essential, and do not have a practically sustainable end of life. I also suggest that we think critically about how to define “plastic” under this regulation. If compostable or biodegradable plastics are to be considered for exemption, they need to be truly compostable beyond an industrial compost facility, and/or biodegradable in a relatively short time scale in the environment, meaning less than six months. To the best of my knowledge, there are no products currently on the market that meet these criteria.
I want to spend my last minutes discussing the effects of plastic once it becomes pollution.
My research mainly focuses on the small stuff. The term “microplastic” incorporates a large diversity of plastic types, including degraded bits of larger plastic products, such as single-use items. My research demonstrates that microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment, including in our Arctic and in seafood and drinking water extracted from the Great Lakes.
My research also demonstrates that microplastics can be toxic to fish and invertebrates. There have been many studies testing the effects of microplastics on organisms. Although results are variable, there's irrefutable evidence that microplastics can impact organisms at concentrations that are already present in some places in the environment. Although we do not yet fully understand how they affect human health, we know that we are exposed, and further research is necessary.
When it comes to large plastic debris, we have no doubt there is an impact on wildlife. Studies report contamination via entanglement or ingestion in hundreds of species. This contamination can lead to laceration of tissues, death of an individual, declines in population size and changes in community assemblages. The weight of evidence for how plastics impact wildlife once it becomes debris in the environment suggests that the time to act is now.
As you know, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, we need a tool box of solutions that include those that help us build a circular economy. One of these is the reduction of unnecessary single-use plastics. In Canada, we have demonstrated leadership in this space, and I thank you. We should continue by building a circular economy, reducing emissions of plastics into our environment, and cleaning up what has become pollution.
I envision diverse policies working in tandem, and these should include those currently on the table, which include expanded and harmonized EPR, or extended producer responsibility; the implementation of standards that increase the use of recycled content in new products; and the elimination of problematic single-use plastics.
I want to thank you again for this opportunity, and I'd be really happy to answer any questions today or in the future.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity.
I'm pleased once again to be joined by my colleague, Elena Mantagaris.
As we mentioned the last time we spoke just a few short weeks ago, Canada's chemistry and plastics industry does share Parliament's and Canadians' concerns and views that plastics have no place in the natural environment. Our industry accepts its shared responsibility for addressing the issue of post-consumer plastics. We're designing products for recyclability. We're using recycled content. We're advancing industry-led producer responsibility programs from coast to coast, investing in technology infrastructure, and taking action to address marine plastic litter, especially in developing countries.
Our industries do believe that a circular economy for plastics is possible and achievable within a relatively modest time frame. Once again—and I'm sure Mr. Roter will reinforce this—our customers are demanding it.
One purpose of this study is with regard to the economic impacts of the federal government's proposed approach to listing plastic manufactured items on CEPA's schedule 1 list of toxic substances and banning certain single-use plastics. I'd reinforce that it's important to recognize that the chemistry and plastics industry is very heterogeneous, but for the purpose of trying to simplify this for you, I'll just talk about two distinct components.
First, we have the large upstream resin manufacturers. These are very large global multinationals with massive facilities in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec.
Second—and these companies will be impacted very differently—we have the downstream plastics product manufacturers. They take the resins and convert them into the plastic products that we all use in our lives every day. These downstream companies are widely dispersed. There are nearly 2,000 of them across Canada. Eighty-six per cent of them are small and medium-sized enterprises, and the vast majority of those are family-owned companies. Many of those companies specialize in single products, such as plastic bags, or a small suite of products. The ban will disproportionately harm these companies and their employees and, in some cases, close off domestic markets entirely.
Moreover, Canada is a relatively small country in terms of the number of people and the size of markets. Like most Canadian industries, these companies, to remain profitable and to operate at scale, serve both domestic and export markets. One thing that's proposed or discussed in the federal government's approach is a ban on the export of plastic products, even to economies that don't have bans similar to what Canada is proposing. Those companies will be left with no choice but to either relocate or shut down entirely, because it won't be feasible to produce products if there's no export market either.
I think, however—and you've heard me say this on past occasions—that the biggest economic impact that will arise from the proposed federal actions will be the effect on future investment opportunities. Canada is a global-scale, low-carbon-producing plastics producer. We're the third-largest manufacturer in Canada. We're a top-10 global plastics resin producer. This industry is expanding globally, as I've said, at twice the global GDP. We think it sends a very negative signal to the global industry to list all plastic manufactured items as CEPA-toxic. It sends the message that Canada is ambivalent at best, if not actually in opposition, to growth and investment in this sector.
We cannot achieve a circular economy and we cannot achieve the investments necessary for a circular economy without attracting that global investment here. It will come out of the sector we already have.
Canada has a great opportunity. You've heard me say that we've seen $300 billion of investment in the United States in the last six years. Canada should have seen $30 billion of that in its own chemistry sector. We have largely become a flyover destination for chemistry sector investment, and a toxic designation and the listing of all plastic manufactured items as toxic will exacerbate that problem.
We see our largest provinces—Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia—all prioritizing economic growth, partly based on recovery through the COVID pandemic and partly on the basis of new chemistry investments. As we did with the COVID epidemic, we need the federal government and the provincial governments working hand in hand with industry and other stakeholders in a consistent and integrated manner.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me the time to represent my viewpoints on this critically important subject.
I see three key gaps in the proposed CEPA legislation.
The first one is that plastics are not toxic, especially when the alternatives are considered.
The second one is that dealing with the root cause of the environmental issue, Canada's hopelessly outdated and ineffective waste management practice, isn't addressed to the extent it needs to be.
Finally, there are the economic and employment impacts.
On the first one, in terms of why plastics are not toxic, plastics are not toxic in any traditional sense of the word. They are extremely stable chemically and do not interact easily with other substances. They are one of the most commonly used materials within the medical industry. Fully 73% of medical disposables on a worldwide basis are made from plastic. Plastic is medical grade. Compared to aluminum or glass, when broken into smaller pieces, plastics do not cause the same level of cutting hazard that either of those materials do. The combination of medical-grade qualities and unbreakability is exactly why plastics have displaced other materials in food and beverage packaging. Plastics deliver products safely, they minimize food waste and they are well suited for transportation.
Aluminum, unlike plastic, is chemically very reactive. That's why every aluminum can produced is supplied with a plastic liner.
Paper is also a wonderful material, but its application is highly limited. Paper-based products cannot perform in applications involving liquids like water or oil without additives or multi-layer structures, including plastic linings. Many polycoated pulp packaging containers use perfluorinated chemicals, PFAS. PFAS do not decompose.
The uncontrolled release, therefore, of waste into the environment is at the core of the toxic argument, and addressing that is something I agree with completely.
When we talk about putting an end to the outdated concept of the linear economy and why the circular economy is key to protecting our natural resources, I would like to offer the following on plastics.
The term “single-use plastics” is a misnomer. The only things keeping the majority of plastics in use today from being used repeatedly are updating Canada's waste management policies into a resource management policy focus, incentivizing investment in recycling, and establishing minimum recycled content standards for all articles, plastics or otherwise.
Nationally, the beverage industry recycles close to 75% of all plastic containers. The technology to recycle PET plastic, the one used in those containers, is mature. It's effective and it needs to be expanded.
Recycling and reuse are a proven solution, but the legislation falls short in addressing this critical issue to the extent I believe it should.
Finally, when we think about the environmental impacts, plastic has the lowest melting point of any packaging material and therefore requires less energy to produce or recycle. Relative to the PET plastic used in a beverage container, paper composites have 1.6 times the carbon footprint, aluminum 1.7 times, and glass 4.4 times the carbon footprint.
PET plastic does also not require deforestation or open-pit mining the way paper and aluminum do.
In terms of jobs, Husky is part of Canada's $35-billion plastics industry, which employs directly and indirectly 370,000 people, most, as has already been stated, in small or medium-sized businesses, a segment that has been devastated by the COVID lockdown structure.
Husky, as part of that, employs roughly 1,100 people in Canada and 4,000 globally. We invest $60 million annually through 190 different suppliers that employ 10,000 Canadians. Over the last 10 years, Husky has paid out over $1.8 billion in Canadian payroll. We are a world leader in Industry 4.0 and on a three-year basis are on track to invest $190 million in our Canadian operations while upscaling our workforce for digitalization. Our goal is to ensure that our Canadian operations can compete with any in the world.
However, since this legislation has been tabled, Husky, and many of our customers and co-suppliers to the industry, have put our investments in Canada on hold.
The right solution, in my opinion, is to engage our industry and its 1,700 small and medium-sized businesses in the solution. The development of the circular economy will create jobs.
In summary, the era of take, make and toss, otherwise referred to as the linear economy, is over, and I think we can all agree with that. We—and I mean all 7.8 billion people on this planet, each striving for a better standard of living—have passed the point of no return. We simply extract more from mother earth far more quickly today than she can hope to replenish. Through public-private partnership, we can consider turning what we call waste today into the resources we use tomorrow over and over again.
Plastics represent a family of materials that are ideally suited to a circular economy. Many plastics are infinitely reusable. They are purified and sanitized during the recycling process.
:
I'll take it from the top. Third time's the charm.
Thank you so much again for your patience.
I'm very pleased to join you as the managing director of the Canada Plastics Pact.
The Canada Plastics Pact is tackling waste and pollution at source. We're a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's global Plastics Pact network and an independent initiative of The Natural Step Canada, a national charity with 25 years of experience in fostering a strong and inclusive economy that thrives within nature's limits.
Over 50 leading organizations are part of the Canada Plastics Pact, all taking action to achieve a circular economy for plastics. This is a growing network with expertise ranging from chemical and resin manufacturers to packaging and consumer goods producers to retailers, collectors, sorters and recyclers. It includes for-profit, not-for-profit and public sector organizations. This is the only network that brings together all of Canada's plastics value chain under one roof.
We recently completed a study showing that about 1.9 million tonnes of plastics packaging is produced in Canada each year. Of this, 88% ends up thrown away in landfills, burned in incinerators or lost to the environment. Just 12% is recycled.
That 88% represents waste, not just garbage. It's a wasted economic opportunity, a wasted chance at investing in innovation and industrial development and wasted greenhouse gas emissions.
If the question is how to address the make, take, waste reality of plastics today, the answer is with a circular economy—as we've heard from the other speakers—in which we keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment. This would mean eliminating the plastic packaging we don't need while innovating to ensure the plastic packaging we do need is reused or recycled. A circular economy for plastic turns waste into tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic value while stimulating innovation and benefiting the environment.
A 2019 Recycling Council of Alberta report identified that increasing recycling in that province alone could generate $700 million per year in economic value and nearly 6,000 jobs. This is also true elsewhere in Canada, where a circular economy for plastics can produce high-quality, future-fit jobs. Imagine well-paid, safe, and secure jobs in sorting, recycling and industrial facilities from Kelowna to Kitchener, coast to coast to coast, in urban, rural and remote areas.
For the petrochemical sector, this poses an opportunity to develop world-leading innovation. Take, for example, a recent partnership between B.C.-based Merlin Plastics and Calgary-based NOVA Chemicals to turn recycled polyethylene into food-grade plastic resin.
Canada has an R and D infrastructure in place, supported by leading academic institutions, that is already driving this type of innovation in established companies and start-ups. More is possible.
The environmental benefits are also clear. Keeping plastics out of landfills and incinerators benefits our communities and animal and human health. Recycling plastic reduces greenhouse gases by over two-thirds compared to making resin from fresh, virgin resources.
If the early stages of the Canada Plastics Pact have proven anything, it's that industry is highly invested in bringing about a circular economy for plastics in Canada.
The involvement of all levels of government is also key. Bans on single-use plastic items are one possible tool on the menu of options available to governments. While partners in the Canada Plastics Pact have a range of views on this topic, our signatories have committed to designing out plastic packaging that is problematic for collection and recycling supply chains.
I would, however, like to shine a light on some additional approaches that the federal government can consider.
First, there's a clear role for the federal government in coordinating an effort to collect and share plastics data. Currently, data is inconsistent and insufficient on what plastics are flowing through the system and where they're ending up. Simply, you can't manage what you can't measure.
Second, there's an opportunity for the federal government to establish an industrial policy agenda for a circular plastics economy. Specifically, it can create national definitions in performance standards for the collection and recycling of plastics; support the provinces as they set out performance-based regulations, such as extended producer responsibility; and establish national recycled content standards while using public procurement to drive demand. These supply- and demand-side policies will set the basis for technological innovation in the circularity of plastics.
Third, no one part of the plastics value chain can address the challenge of waste alone, so it's important for governments to invest in the multi-stakeholder platforms for collaboration that are crucial for driving holistic systems change.
To conclude, let me be clear that the Canada Plastics Pact members do not speak with one voice on the proposed bans. What we are agreed on is that there is a broader agenda and a set of policies that the government will need to put in place to realize the benefits of, and position Canada as a leader in, the essential transition to a circular plastics economy.
Thank you.
:
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee.
I am Sophie Langlois-Blouin, vice-president of RECYC-QUÉBEC. I am responsible for operations.
RECYC-QUÉBEC is a government corporation that reports to the Minister of the Environment and works every day to reduce, reuse and recycle as much material as possible by guiding both citizens, municipalities and businesses in the adoption of responsible production and consumption practices. Our vision is to make Quebec a waste-free society.
You are studying the issue of plastics and single-use products. This is an issue in which RECYC-QUÉBEC has been very active for many years. All of our interventions, whether for plastics or other materials, are essentially based on the 3RV hierarchy, which you may be familiar with. So our main actions touch on reduction at source and reuse.
Over the past year, RECYC-QUÉBEC has offered financial support to concrete projects that reduce plastics and single-use products. Ten projects were selected last February, in 10 regions of Quebec, for just under $900,000.
I would say that there is genuine enthusiasm on the part of citizens, businesses and municipalities, who want to make the transition and reduce plastic or single-use products at the source. These can be completely eliminated by raising awareness. There is a buy-in to this kind of initiative. It is very important for us to continue to support and document this. We are also working to promote reuse, which is the transition to sustainable products. It's about moving away from single-use and disposable products. We've prepared different information sheets on that.
We've also done outreach in the past to show that not only are there environmental benefits from reducing plastic or single-use products and using reusable products, but also economic benefits. It's important to talk about this. Businesses and merchants that make the transition to sustainable products can quickly see savings, especially in their acquisitions.
More and more new companies and business models are emerging. The Quebec example I want to talk about is La tasse, created by the organization La vague. It's a visually recognizable blue mug that has been adopted by many retailers and cafés in many cities. It allows consumers to pick up the mug at one location and take it back to another. It's really this kind of initiative that we want to support and roll out on a larger scale in different regions of Quebec.
When it comes to plastics and single-use products or packaging, there are two things that our work has led us to pay particular attention to.
First, reducing plastic products is good, but we must be careful not to create a rebound effect, especially when we want to reduce food packaging. We know that packaging can play a role in preserving and extending the shelf life of food. It is possible to reduce both packaging and food waste, but it must be done in an informed manner. In particular, RECYC-QUÉBEC participated in a study by the National Zero Waste Council that focused specifically on the link between packaging and food waste reduction.
Second, when looking for solutions to replace single-use plastics, we need to be careful about the impacts of those solutions. In the past, we conducted a life-cycle analysis of shopping bags. We looked at reusable bags and single-use bags, and found that the single-use plastic bag had the least environmental impact over its entire lifespan. It is often said that replacing one disposable product with another disposable product is not the best solution. You should first look at whether you can reduce their use or even switch to sustainable products.
In closing, I would like to point out that RECYC-QUÉBEC is also very active in the field of transitioning to the circular economy. This is a set of strategies to achieve our goal. Recycling is part of it, but, for us, it is one of the last strategies to look at.
In Quebec, we are working to update and modernize our recovery and recycling systems, particularly selective collection and the refundable deposit system. Last March, legislation was passed to modernize both of these systems under an extended producer responsibility approach. Deposits will also be expanded to include all types of beverage containers. So we are talking about an expanded and modernized deposit.
In summary, source reduction and reuse are our priorities.
In terms of specific examples, there's no question that many of our members have indicated that this type of approach will affect their businesses and the future of their operations. I recently met with MP with just two of our members who represent 600 jobs in the Etobicoke North area. There are dozens and dozens of plastics companies in that area. They both indicated that jobs would be at risk.
I spoke with another company out of Montreal that recycles plastic bags, the item that's being proposed to be banned. If this moves forward, they'll likely move their locations to the U.S. Why would they choose to be in a jurisdiction where their product is being declared toxic and where the investment they've made in recycling infrastructure is not valued? They'll go where it's valued.
Certainly, to build on Bob Masterson's point, I think many of our members are questioning whether future investments in this country are feasible, whether in the recycling system or just in the plastics production sector in general.
Thank you to all the witnesses who are here today. This is a really wonderful start to our plastics study.
Professor Rochman, I'd like to start with you, if I may, to highlight the research that you mentioned you've been conducting. Since my colleague Mr. Albas talked about toxicity, I'd like to open by getting a clarification.
When we're talking about toxicity, we're talking about the impacts on biodiversity and on health, both of those aspects. In exploring that in relation to CEPA, we're really looking at the agility to be able to protect our biodiversity. With regard to the environmental risks of plastic pollution on the ecosystem, particularly microplastics, can you highlight for me and for this committee a little bit more about the organisms, species and wildlife that are impacted by the microplastics and the toxicity potentially related to it?
:
Sure, I would be happy to. Thank you for the question. I'll start with wildlife, and then I'll answer the question about human health.
When it comes to wildlife, there's no doubt that organisms are exposed. This includes animals at every level of the food web. In Lake Ontario, for example, where I live, we sometimes find fish with more than 100 pieces of microplastics in their gut contents. They're exposed, and in certain locations, they're exposed to a high concentration.
A number of laboratory studies have looked at the effects on organisms. This includes zooplankton, organisms at that lower level of the food chain, and from molluscs like mussels and clams and oysters all the way up to fish. If people synthesize that work and put it together, they can look at the risk to the species. For example, if I put this information together, what is the concentration that harms 5% of the species within the environment? That concentration is around 100 to 120 particles per litre. That concentration is found in some parts of our Great Lakes already.
When it comes to microplastics, we still have a lot to learn in terms of the different types of plastics out there, but we know that the concentrations we find in nature in high concentrations can be toxic to freshwater and marine species.
When it comes to human health, we know that there are microplastics in our drinking water. We know that there are microplastics in the seafood we eat as a result of microplastics leaving the gut and going into parts of the organism that we eat. We don't yet know how it impacts human health. That's still a bit of a black box.
:
I think part of the reason those products have been left off is that they're not easily substitutable. That's my guess. Food packaging, for example, is a tricky one.
Right now, from what we know about the toxicity of plastics and from the risk assessments in place, the risk has to do with the size and quantity of the microplastics in the gut of an organism. There is some evidence, though, that certain plastic types can be more toxic than others. For example, you mentioned polystyrene and PVC. Tire dust is another example. In the case of tire dust, we understand that it might be more hazardous than a polyethylene. As for PVC and polystyrene, while there are chemicals in them that can make them more toxic than other types of plastics, I don't think there's enough evidence yet to suggest that they're leaching at a rate that could harm organisms.
Right now, it's microplastics in general, as a mixture, that should be kept out of the environment, regardless of material type.
:
The only key points I wanted to make were around the alternatives.
I think everyone here agrees that keeping plastics out of the environment is the right issue. The fundamental concept I wanted to get across is to say that if we move to an alternative material, let's make sure that it's not going to have a larger environmental impact in production, that it's not going to have a larger environmental impact in collection and reuse, and finally, let's make sure that when it does break down and finds its way into the environment, it isn't going to represent an even more hazardous substance. Fundamentally, those are the three points we've been debating here, but I don't know that we've integrated them.
The final point I was going to make on this, and then I'll close, concerns my observations from visiting waste management companies and from other things we've done to try to understand this issue. We're rather pitting one side against the other here. My final point was that I think doing so is a mistake. Nobody's going to win in doing so.
There have been salient and good arguments made by many people that we have to control plastics finding a way into the environment. I'm not arguing with any of those fundamental principles. The concern I have is that when we talk about how we do this, how do we make sure that not only plastics but all waste doesn't find its way into the environment? What does it mean to identify materials that can be reused? What does it mean to have waste management bring enough of it back to make it economic to reprocess and reuse effectively?
Those are the closing comments. It's a system-level problem, and I find we're looking at it in too many small pieces, rather than together. That's probably my most significant comment.
:
Absolutely, and because we're a global company, we have the opportunity to work around the world with various countries.
I'll talk about Germany and Norway, because they're the gold standard in the collection and reuse of plastics today. Both countries claim and deliver a 97% recovery and reuse rate today. That's today. As a matter of fact, Germany alone recovers and recycles three times the amount of plastic materials that Canada in its entirety uses annually. They have, then, proven solutions.
What we did was look at what the formula was for success. The formula for success included such things as minimum recycled content requirements on all containers. That creates demand.
The second thing was much more convenient and effective waste control systems.
I lived in Europe, in Luxembourg, for five years of my life, and starting 20 years ago, systems existed such that I could place the materials in an appropriate location conveniently. In Canada, in the 15 minutes between my farm and Husky, the way of collecting materials differs. That's the second element of it that was to me absolutely crucial.
The third thing is incentivizing industry by way of investment in the recycling infrastructure. That's a significant part of the German equation today.
Finally, I think the gold standard is putting value on it. What I mean by that is—and a lot of people have different opinions, including within my industry—through a deposit. If you look at a deposit system, you see that what's really powerful about it is that whether the individual returns the container for the deposit or throws it into the environment, the deposit system incentivizes somebody to collect it and recover it before it can find its way through our streams, into our lakes and out into our oceans, so [Technical difficulty—Editor] globally that we're good.
Quite frankly, there are 300 member companies in the plastics recycling association in Germany. [Technical difficulty—Editor] so it's also really good for employment and business.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses. This is such great information. I think we're all learning a lot.
Ms. Rochman, I'd like to start off by asking you some questions. I'm going to reference the 2018 scientific paper that you wrote. I want to look at the human side of this issue [Technical difficulty—Editor] from bioaccumulation of microplastics and nanoplastics making their way into the marine food chain.
You mentioned that toxicity levels vary depending on the chemicals associated with different plastics and their sources. I'm also going to reference something else. As you will recall, there was a 2016 UN report which stated that over 800 animal species were contaminated with plastic via ingestion or entanglement. [Technical difficulty—Editor] not only as an industry, but recognize that's 6.7% of the world's protein.
Are you able to identify what sources of microplastics provide the greatest threats to both marine and human health? How best can we mitigate this threat?
:
There's a huge increase in the amount of literature that comes out every year. We're learning a lot more every year about the risk of microplastics to [
Technical difficulty—Editor] comes to seafood, which is, I think, what you are asking me about.
We know these microplastics can get into the fillet or the parts of the fish we eat. We have numbers even for Lake Simcoe in terms of how much we see in the fillet and how that may matter in terms of exposure. Right now, as I said, there is some literature.
You mentioned before that certain plastics may be more harmful than others. I'm working right now on a risk assessment for the State of California for both humans and wildlife. Even though I think that as we learn more, we might change our minds, for the purpose of this risk assessment we are saying that microplastic is microplastic is microplastic. We're not differentiating between the different types. We're saying that what matters is the concentration and the volume. It has to do with the size of the particles and the number of particles.
For that matter, there are lots of different sources of microplastics coming into the environment. I can't tell you which one is the most important in terms of which type is the most toxic. I can tell you that I recognize that seafood is really important. I think the amount humans are exposed to from seafood is probably much smaller than from drinking water or dust. We don't have enough evidence right now to tell people how or what to consume based on what we know about human health and exposure from seafood. Right now places are trying to start to do that for drinking water first.
:
You're talking about the paper by Brahney et al. in Science Magazine last year, understanding and basically showing us that microplastics cycle in the water cycle and cycle in the global dust cycle. We're starting to understand how that relates to the carbon cycle.
What this says to me is that microplastic is ubiquitous and persistent enough that it's getting into these fundamental planetary cycles. Then you ask what it means and what we can do about it.
I think there's urgency to do something. I think there's a tool box. I see the plastic issue as similar to the climate issue, in the sense of there not being one solution. We need to use many levers at the same time, one of which is reducing the amount of plastic waste we produce, which is what we're talking about here today.
Others are filters on washing machines, filters on dryers, stormwater retention systems like bioretention cells and thinking about how to make Operation Clean Sweep even stronger so that we're not losing pellets into the environment. It's these types of things.
I don't have a favourite solution, unfortunately. I think they're all important and, as with carbon emissions, we have to tug on a little bit of everything.
:
Thank you. I have a quick two-part answer.
First, the federal government has provided support to three new proposed investments in the chemistry and plastics area through the strategic innovation fund. In every one of those, the investment from the federal government was tied into sustainability and recycling objectives, research activities, partnerships with universities, etc. I think the government's lens is on the right part of that. They are focused on that part.
Second, on the question of biodegradability, I would encourage you to go back to Professor Rochman and please note her area of caution around the terms of biodegradability, bioplastics, etc., because it is not a solution to the problem as it currently is envisioned.
Our figure in Quebec is a little higher, but you're right. Losses occur in the collection and recycling chain, especially at home, because people don't know how to differentiate between the types of plastic. The concept of labelling or [Technical difficulty—Editor], which involves guidance from the Competition Bureau of Canada, also constitutes a potential solution to make sorting easier for people and to reduce or even eliminate plastic materials directly at home.
Steps are being taken and networking workshops have been held in Quebec, particularly with regard to fibres. There's more and more collaboration. For example, in Quebec, the Circular Plastics Taskforce, or CPT, is a group of companies that market plastic products. The taskforce has made investments and conducted research to cover all aspects of the issue and to assess the needs not only of sorting facilities, but also of packers and recyclers, in order to prevent one part of the chain from blocking the process. It's important to work on all the parts, meaning the products put on the market and the sorting instructions for people, but also the optimization of the sorting and recycling process.
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Before responding about the specific job losses, I'm concerned that we're creating this [
Technical difficulty—Editor] caught here between single-use plastics and other plastics. If we were to invest in a circular economy, we would no longer have this notion of a single-use plastic. I'd urge us to think about the implications of this trajectory of banning things when the right investment would actually change the entire frame of reference.
Specifically, when we look at what it means to jobs in the economy, if we were to look at all single-use plastics and if there were bans in this country on single-use plastics writ large, we would probably be talking nationally of something between $6 and $7 billion in annual sales being at risk.
Those sales represent anywhere from 13,000 to 20,000 direct Canadian jobs. Indirect jobs are two for one, so you're looking at about 26,000 to 40,000 more jobs that would be at risk in introducing bans on single-use plastics. However, if we turned that around and invested in the circular economy, which you're hearing from everyone around the table, we would no longer have this debate and this risk introduced economically.
To answer Mr. Albas' question specifically, those jobs are across the country. Almost 2,000 companies are in almost every single riding in this country, roughly 60% of them in Ontario and another 25%-30% in Quebec, and the rest are scattered in Alberta and British Columbia, with a little bit in some of the other provinces. Every single riding has some of these small and medium-sized enterprises making these plastic products that we benefit from, that we have used extensively for decades.
The issue is not the use of the plastics; it's the waste management around them, or, quite frankly, redesigning all of this so that it's a resource and reused. If we were to focus on that problem rather than on banning the product, we would not be having this debate.
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Look at the automotive sector. If we want to lighten our vehicles and make them more fuel efficient, if we want to electrify them, they need to be lightweight, and that means more plastics.
In any car on the road today, there's a lot more plastic than there was in the vintage you were speaking of earlier with regard to the nursing sector. In the automotive sector, you're seeing the same transformation you saw there. You're seeing it in the aerospace sector.
Why are you seeing it? You're seeing it because they want to lighten the weight. Companies like Air Canada, prior to the pandemic, phased out all of the glass on the airplanes and put in plastic, because by losing even that little bit of extra weight on every flight, they had lighter aircraft with lower emissions.
There's no question I could go on and talk about the penetration of plastics as a lightweight energy-efficient material in all sectors of the economy. There is none, believe it or not, more important than the food and beverage industry, because the packaging often is much more valuable than the product itself, and can often weigh more if you choose the wrong materials. Absolutely, plastics are, for most sectors, a key contributor to the low-carbon economy.
As I said before, there's no doubt that plastics big and small bring measurable risks in the environment, and from that, we know we have to do something now. We've done assessments to try to estimate how much plastic is going into the environment every year, and from that we have a number of about 20 million to 30 million metric tonnes. We know that if we continue business as usual, it may as much as triple.
In order to reduce it, we've done exercises to figure out how hard we need to pull on just the waste management scheme, just the reducing plastic scheme or just the cleanup scheme. If we do just one thing, we have to do an immense amount of work, and that includes in all economies across the world, which is why I think reducing plastic waste is a big part of it. I understand that if we switch to a circular economy, we are also reducing plastic waste, but we need to act quickly. We have been talking about recycling for decades, and it hasn't worked yet. I like recycling, but it hasn't worked yet to the extent that we need it to work.
I do think, based on what I see in the environment, that reducing single-use plastic products on the market will reduce what we see in the environment, will reduce the amount of microplastics we see in the environment, which will protect wildlife and then eventually human health, once we better understand those risks. It worked with microbeads, and I feel that this is another next step in order to reduce more of what's out there before we take another step.
I don't know if that answers your question.
That takes us to 5:30 and the end of our round.
Thank you to all the witnesses for a very interesting discussion from different points of view, in many cases. We have all come out with an understanding of this issue.
Colleagues, as you know, we have a meeting on Thursday. It will start a bit later because of all the votes. We'll be using that meeting to launch our study of Bill . On Monday, April 19, we don't have a meeting. That's because of the budget. We will get back to things on the 21st.
Thank you again to our witnesses and thank you, members, for your excellent questions.
Thank you to the analysts for putting this together and to the clerk for managing this process.
Have a good evening, all. I'm sure we'll see each other at some point to discuss the different kinds of issues that come out of this. Thank you very much.
The meeting is adjourned.