
Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement - nbrempel
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/canada/single-use-plastic-ban.html
======
ridicter
I see comments pointing out that the majority of plastic pollution in oceans
come from Asia/Africa. This is true, but there are two points worth
considering:

1) Whenever you pay cheaply for anything made in any third world country,
you're externalizing the societal cost of pollution to that country (and if it
gets into the oceans, to everyone). In other words, you're not paying the true
cost of that item--economically and to society and the environment.

2) As linked elsewhere: first world nations often export their trash to third
world nations, masquerading as recycled materials - see spat with Philippines
- [https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-garbage-from-
phi...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-garbage-from-philippines-
departure-1.5156007)

~~~
sampo
> first world nations often export their trash to third world nations

Not anymore, pretty much all Asian countries have stopped accepting plastic
trash.

~~~
devy
The damages has been done. It could take hundreds of years and an order of
magnitude's financial resources to clean it up land and underground water
pollutions. But the air/ocean/atmosphere/carbon footprints are shared and
affecting globally.

~~~
whatshisface
We should take a break from games and adtech and save the earth.

~~~
chopin
There's no money in it.

------
gnicholas
> _The World Economic Forum estimates that 90 percent of the plastic ending up
> in the oceans comes from 10 major rivers, and that currently there are 50
> million tons of plastic in the world’s oceans. "_

from the WEF: _researchers were able to estimate that just 10 river systems
carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean. Eight of them are in Asia:
the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in
Africa – the Nile and the Niger._ [1]

It seems odd to mention that nearly all of the plastic waste comes from 10
major rivers and then not to name them (or mention that all of them are a
world away from Canada).

1: [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
polluti...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-
our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/)

~~~
petschge
It's not quite that simple to absolve Canada (and Europe and the US) from
their responsibility for this problem. Quite a bit of the plastic that ends up
in those rivers far away was exported "for recycling" to the countries where
it gets miss-handled and ends up in the landscape.

~~~
jlawson
People keep saying this, but is there any evidence for it? I'm curious where
this comes from.

At first estimate we could just Google images of polluted rivers in Asia and
Africa and look at the logos on the garbage.

From my priors, I'd estimate that the plastics would almost all be from
locally-consumed products, simply thrown into the river as is common and
accepted in such places.

My sense is that a lot of educated, wealthy Westerners don't realize:

1\. How _many_ people are in Asia and Africa.

2\. How little effort they put into keeping their local environment clean.
People just don't get how callous same cultures are about the environment; it
cannot be believed until it's been experienced since it's so far outside of
the wealthy Westerner's experience. (Plus, to believe such would also create
cognitive dissonance with social justice creeds which are victim classes as
inherently morally pure.)

~~~
bobthepanda
China tightened up regulations on importing recycling waste last year and
Western recycling was hit extremely hard: [https://www.wired.com/story/the-
worlds-recycling-is-in-chaos...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-
recycling-is-in-chaos-heres-what-has-to-happen/)

> It has been a year since China jammed the works of recycling programs around
> the world by essentially shutting down what had been the industry’s biggest
> market. China’s National Sword policy, enacted in January 2018, banned the
> import of most plastics and other materials headed for that nation’s
> recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s
> recyclable waste for the past quarter century. The move was an effort to
> halt a deluge of soiled and contaminated materials that was overwhelming
> Chinese processing facilities and leaving the country with yet another
> environmental problem—and this one not of its own making.

> In the year since, China’s plastic imports have plummeted by 99 percent,
> leading to a major global shift in where and how materials tossed in the
> recycling bin are being processed. While the glut of plastics is the main
> concern, China’s imports of mixed paper have also dropped by a third.
> Recycled aluminum and glass are less affected by the ban.

> Globally, more plastics are now ending up in landfills, incinerators, or
> likely littering the environment as rising costs to haul away recyclable
> materials increasingly render the practice unprofitable. In England, more
> than half a million more tons of plastics and other household garbage were
> burned last year. Australia’s recycling industry is facing a crisis as the
> country struggles to handle the 1.3 million-ton stockpile of recyclable
> waste it had previously shipped to China.

~~~
selimthegrim
I wonder what makes glass more suitable

~~~
bobthepanda
To hazard a guess, I would assume that the type of stuff stored in glass
containers in the West tends to be stuff less “soiling” of the recyclable
material, and the fact that people are probably more conditioned to rinse
glass than plastic.

------
nostromo
I really wish they would include exceptions for biodegradable plastics --
which are increasingly indistinguishable from polymer plastics.

When you ban "single use" plastics, people often buy "multi-use" plastics --
which are actually worse for the environment if not used many times, and
people often only use them once. There are a number of stores around me where
they have thick, heavy plastic bags for purchase for 5 cents that I doubt are
actually being reused much at all.

~~~
yardstick
Sounds like the price of reusable bags is too low where you are. There needs
to be a price floor to discourage single-use. Eg 50 cents minimum per bag?

In the UK we charge 5p for a single use bag, although lots of stores now only
sell multi-use bags at 10p or more. I think it’s making a difference, I now
actively carry a couple reusable bags around “just in case” I decide to visit
a supermarket or spur of the moment shopping. I now hardly ever buy plastic
bags (single & multi use), and from what I’ve read, overall the country has
seen a massive reduction in plastic bag waste: down from 140/year/person to
25/year/person [1] (this doesn’t track sales of multi-use plastic bags though
afaik)

1\. [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carrier-bag-
charg...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carrier-bag-charge-
summary-of-data-in-england/single-use-plastic-carrier-bags-charge-data-in-
england-for-2016-to-2017)

~~~
hedora
In countries where they actually banned disposable shopping bags, it was even
worse.

People end up buying more trash bags (since they had small trash cans to fit
the disposable bags), which are thicker, and something like 10x less efficient
in garbage removal per pound of plastic than the banned bags. (I’m guessing
your stats don’t count trash bags, unless people in the UK use fewer than one
a week).

On its own, that was enough to increase plastic in the waste stream.

If you add in other problems (like buying “reusable” bags, then throwing them
out), it gets even worse.

So, you need to ban _all_ plastic bags for these measures to actually help.

~~~
yardstick
Interesting, do you have a source for this?

------
radcon
Weren't plastic bags created because they have a significantly smaller
environmental impact than paper? You need to re-use a paper bag at least 3
times before it's better than using a plastic bag[1]. And let's face it, no
one re-uses those flimsy paper bags from grocery stores, but they're becoming
the standard wherever plastic is banned.

Those "environmentally friendly" re-usable grocery bags aren't much better
either. Depending on the material, they need to be used anywhere from 30 to
300+ times before they're less harmful than plastic bags[2].

Am I missing something or are regulators overreacting here? Clearly some
countries have serious litter issues (sounds like the vast majority comes from
Asia and Africa), but does that justify the rest of the world trading one type
of pollution for another? Are we even fixing the problem or just making
ourselves feel better?

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/life-cycle-
assess...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/life-cycle-assessment-
of-supermarket-carrierbags-a-review-of-the-bags-available-in-2006)

[2] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/to-
to...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/to-tote-or-note-
to-tote/498557/)

~~~
nostromo
It really depends on what you're measuring.

Plastic bags are very bad when they end up in rivers or the ocean.

But yes, plastic bags might be better on CO2 depending on where they are made
and how they are shipped.

But paper bags _can_ be made carbon neutral, which is fundamentally impossible
with plastic bags.

~~~
olejorgenb
It's possible to make synthetic petroleum products from CO2, water and
electricity, so it's not fundamentally impossible.

------
Tiktaalik
This sort of policy is somewhat of a distraction from the wildly more
important goal of reducing CO2 emissions.

A single use plastics ban is fine if it is a minor part of a more
comprehensive policy that is focused on CO2 emissions, but by itself, eh, this
is not really our most pressing issue in the near term is it? (of course we
should reduce single use plastics eventually)

This government has been very uneven on climate issues so I'm not expecting
them to announce a ban on CO2 emitting power generation tomorrow or anything.
My concern is that announcing this policy so soon after the NDP announced the
same thing in their rather bold environmental package is merely part of an
attempt to boost their environmentalist cred and blunt the impact of rival
environmentalist parties while changing the channel away from their weaker CO2
reduction efforts.

~~~
Kluny
> merely part of an attempt to boost their environmentalist cred and blunt the
> impact rival environmentalist parties while in actuality doing the absolute
> minimum

Yeah, it fully is. The major parties in Canada are slowly, and much too late,
getting the message that the environment is the biggest election issue this
year. They haven't been taking it seriously at all til now, hence this kind of
bandwagon jumping. We're still going to hold them to the promise though.

~~~
nickelcitymario
> the environment is the biggest election issue this year

Is it? It should be, but I'm pretty sure the biggest election issue is always
going to be the economy.

That being said, maybe the advantage is that the environment is becoming less
of a partisan issue. Anecdotally, my left- and right-wing friends and family
seem to be coming closer to a consensus that we need to act.

Still, it's easy to say "we need to fix the environment". My own city council
voted unanimously on a resolution to slash our city's greenhouse gas
production. But then when it comes to specific proposals on what that would
look like, such as saying "no" to building a new convention centre or new
highways, suddenly there's no political will. "Something should absolutely be
done... as long as it doesn't cost us anything."

So we'll ban single use plastics (barely effective, but very popular), but we
won't cut back on exploiting the Alberta oil sands, or on deforestation for
that matter (both of which would have a tremendous impact, but at great
economic and political cost).

------
DINKDINK
Will the production of plastic waste reduce when the outlawing of thin
plastics is replaced by thicker plastics?

Your politician who benefits from passing feel-good legislation says yes.

Reality might surprise you:

"In particular, my results showed that bag bans caused sales of small (4
gallon), medium (8 gallon) and large (13 gallon) trash bags to increase by 120
percent, 64 percent and 6 percent respectively."
[https://theconversation.com/plastic-bag-bans-can-backfire-
if...](https://theconversation.com/plastic-bag-bans-can-backfire-if-consumers-
just-use-other-plastics-instead-110571)

~~~
lozenge
And the bottom line - "30 percent of the plastic eliminated by the ban was
coming back in the form of trash bags". So, the policy was 70 percent
successful. Why then all the hand-wringing?

~~~
DINKDINK
30% by mass not by pollution. The speculative aim of the legislation is to
decrease pollution. It's a bit like saying alcohol abuse will go down if we
ban alcohol (when the opposite happened, hardcore liquor prevalence and
potency _increased_ which increased alcohol abuse).

Coase theorem shows that increasing transaction costs increases externality
costs.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem)

If you ban the giving out of thin-plastic bags because they feel bad, and then
the market moves towards giving everyone a thick (more environmentally taxing
and ecologically costly) 'reusable' bag, you've made the environment worse not
better (despite it feeling better). Case in point: the number of times a bag
needs to be reused before it was less ecologically costly far exceeds the life
of the bag.

------
no1youknowz
This can only be a good thing.

There are now alternatives to plastic from biodegradable materials such as
lobster shells and cactus juice. I'm sure with more research and better
methods, mother nature can offer more materials to use for consumption tools.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBSzxQLQSpI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBSzxQLQSpI)

[1]: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-48497933/how-to-
make-b...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-48497933/how-to-make-
biodegradable-plastic-from-cactus-juice)

~~~
the_pwner224
PLA plastic is made from just organic materials. It degrades into lactic acid,
and is safely used for medical implants. It doesn't degrade naturally at
normal temperatures, but can be effectively recycled, composted, or
incinerated.

Right now it mostly gets thrown away into the environment like most trash, but
is a sustainable plastic if handled properly.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic)

------
barking
Canada is not where the problem is at, so to speak

 _By analyzing the waste found in the rivers and surrounding landscape,
researchers were able to estimate that just 10 river systems carry 90% of the
plastic that ends up in the ocean.

Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl;
Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger._

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
polluti...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-
our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/)

~~~
manishsharan
Third world countries follow First world countries. In India, not too long
ago, cheap roadside restaurants(dhabas) used plates made out of leaves and
served tea in cups made out of clay. Now that is considered a sign of
primitiveness and poverty. If first world nations change their attitude
towards plastics, the third world nations will follow suit eventually.

~~~
seltzered_
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/co...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/confessions-
of-a-trash-tourist-india/373118/) covers this topic well.

"I was surprised to learn that the average Bangalorean throws out very little
trash: about a pound of garbage per day, or the weight of a grapefruit. The
average American generates more than four times that amount, according to the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or more than seven times that amount,
according to a more rigorous methodology developed by Columbia University and
the BioCycle trade journal. We’ve nearly doubled our per capita output of
garbage since 1960, to the point where we now generate 50 percent more trash
than Western Europeans and two to three times more than the Japanese."

"As I wound my way through Bangalore’s streets in the Daily Dump van, I
spotted numerous American brands out the window: Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Levi’s,
McDonald’s, Pizza Hut. But the United States doesn’t just export products to
India—it exports a culture of consumption, backed by billions in advertising
dollars."

------
Tiktaalik
Not mentioned in this article but worth noting that the City of Vancouver was
interested in pursuing a single use plastics ban taking effect this summer in
2019, but backed away when disability rights activists protested that plastic
straws are very important for people with mobility challenges, and they
considered the non-plastic alternative straws available to be poor and not
viable options.

~~~
nickserv
What's wrong with carrying your own stainless steel straw? I mean if you know
you need one it makes sense to me to have your own.

Not being snarky, just curious.

~~~
Robotbeat
It'll stab you in the throat.

A real concern for children, and undoubtedly also for some disabled folk:
[https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/starbucks-to-recall-
stainl...](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/starbucks-to-recall-stainless-
steel-beverage-straws-to-provide-new-warnings)

Just use biodegradable plastic straws.

~~~
amyjess
Biodegradable plastic has its own issues as well. Nearly all of them are food-
based and will set off one food allergy or another, plus you may also have
issues with straws dissolving in hot liquids.

Someone elsewhere in the thread mentioned straws made of lobster shells. In
addition to shellfish allergies, such a straw isn't going to be suitable for
anyone who's vegan, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't kosher either
(TBH, I'm Jewish, but I don't keep kosher, and I don't know enough about the
laws of kashrut to say whether or not drinking out of a lobster-shell straw is
equivalent to eating lobster).

~~~
Robotbeat
Hard to drink hot liquids with a straw anyway (stirrers are another story).

The plastics I'm think of are PLA and PHA. Mainly made of corn, but you could
synthesize them from pure chemicals as well. Far more common than these
"lobster shell" ones.

~~~
amyjess
Honestly, even in cold liquids, I'd be worried about non-plastic straws
getting soggy and/or melting if left long enough.

I haven't specifically looked into PLA and PHA much, but a quick google sees
PLA being referred to as "too good to be true" and having "misleading
biodegradability". I'm not seeing such concerns about PHA, but I've also only
spent like a minute looking it up, and I wouldn't be surprised if some more
intensive searching turns up some serious drawbacks. I have turned up some
concerns about bioplastic production competing with food for the same
agricultural resources, though.

~~~
Robotbeat
PLA really needs an industrial composter to break down fully, but this is
still better than traditional plastics. It's just polymerized lactic acid,
which is common and naturally occuring in the human body.

PHA generally breaks down faster in the natural environment (i.e. it's
biodegradable, not just compostable) and it has similar properties to PLA.

Straws use an absolutely minimal amount of material. I really don't think
concern over agricultural resources is valid for such uses as it is compared
to, say, the massive amounts used for biofuels. And of course, it's not as if
metals have no resource requirements, either.

A typical straw weighs about .42 grams and thus uses about as much
agricultural material as two kernels of corn (about as many calories as two
tic tacs). That's not the problem, here. To put that in perspective, the
energy in that straw (about 0.005 kilowatt-hours) is less than we just wasted
arguing about it online.

------
8bitsrule
Everything we buy and throw-away has an energy cost for manufacturing,
transport and disposal. We pay more for the energy and convenience and waste
... and so does the only environment we have to live in.

The acceptance of throwaway has to end. We HAVE to find (or go back to) new
routines which minimize those costs. Single-use plastics are a start, but
we'll need to thoroughly revise manufacture, consumption and re-use across the
board.

------
kilo_bravo_3
Hopefully mankind's addiction to single-use plastics and the negligent
disposal of all plastics can be stopped before exposure to, inhalation of, and
ingestion of large quantities of microscopic shards of poly-whatever start
shredding and poisoning our bodies from the inside.

~~~
benj111
"microscopic shards of poly-whatever start shredding and poisoning our bodies
from the inside"

Is there any evidence that this could happen? It's the first I've heard of it.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
The effect has only been seen in aquatic animals so far, but they are exposed
to much more microplastics than humans are.

But microplastics don't (on a human timescale) go away.

They just continue to accumulate as plastic items degrade in UV light and
water, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces.

Microplastics have been detected in the feces of humans:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/mi...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/microplastics-
are-turning-up-everywhere-even-in-human-excrement)

And the bottom of the Marianas trench:
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/12/micro...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/12/microplastic-
pollution-is-found-in-deep-sea/)

And they're harmful to sea life:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-
huma...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-
microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/)

And smaller microplastic particles, which all larger particles eventually
become, can float through the air.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the problem is going to keep getting
worse and worse as time goes on until it gets to a point where every breath we
take is contaminated shards of plastics:
[https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Photographs-of-
microplas...](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Photographs-of-
microplastics-under-the-stereomicroscope-fiber-a-b-c-film-d-e-
f_fig2_324040524)

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/micro...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/microplastics-
pollution-falls-from-air-even-mountains/)

I'm not a doctor, or a plasticsologist, or a breathing-things-in-ologist, but
breathing in large quantities of plastic shards seems less healthy than not
doing so and just from a layman's perspective it seems that exposure to
microplastics in the air and water should be minimized to the greatest extent
possible.

~~~
jopsen
We know that particle pollution from coal plants, heavy fuel oil powered
container ships, and cars/truck already kill a lot of people.

We know that we have air pollution, I find it unlikely that plastic will be
much worse.

Do we have any reason to think so?

Note. I'm not saying it's harmless, just that maybe we have bigger fish to fry
first.

------
brailsafe
I'm pretty okay with this as a Canadian. It's been on my mind quite a bit
actually. Much of the visible debris comes from momentary indulgences that are
then carelessly discarded. Thats the natural way for many people, not that I
agree with it. Rather than try and change their behaviour, it's an interesting
thought experiment to think about the effects of not allowing such flagrantly
wasteful products to be made in the first place. In Canada, much of the
visible debris inland comes from cheap coffee cups and shitty packaging
design—if I understand single-use plastics correctly, which I may not. It's
pretty gross, and I'd like to see more innovation towards non-detrimental
disposable goods. Of course, I'd also like to see a cultural increase in
having pride for the cleanliness of urban areas, but that might be a pipe-
dream in Western Canada outside BC (I'm from a prairie city)

------
jasonhansel
I find it amazing that plastic has only been around for less than a century,
but has now become so ubiquitous and commonplace that it's a nuisance. Nearly
all the other materials we use (wood, metal, etc.) have been around for many
many centuries, but don't seem to pose the same inherent risk.

------
davidy123
While I fully support this ban, even if it's not that much more than a gesture
in the larger issue of carbon and the environment, I think it's largely
related to the very public and embarrassing row over badly sorted garbage sent
to the Philippines. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-garbage-from-
phi...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadian-garbage-from-philippines-
departure-1.5156007)

That incident is however an indication of how difficult it is to properly
dispose of single-use plastics, and this will help solve that problem.

~~~
pesfandiar
There's a federal election in Canada in October, and based on polls, the
governing party is losing some votes to the Green Party. This could be more
directly explained by that, but I agree that it's certainly a positive side
effect regardless.

~~~
fooblitzky
Don't forget it's the same government investing billions of dollars in
petrochemical plants[1] to manufacture.... more plastic.

[1] [https://globalnews.ca/news/4857778/canadian-petrochemical-
gr...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4857778/canadian-petrochemical-growth-
plastics)

------
mabbo
It's an election year. Trudeau wants a second term. But he's turned off much
of his traditional centrist base (corruption allegations, many of us realizing
he's actually not very smart, etc). He's got new leaders on both the
Conservative party (the right) and the NDP (the left) who are trying to
squeeze the votes out of middle.

He knows he's got little chance of winning back anyone right of center- the
Conservatives will take those votes most likely- so he's going after the votes
on the left.

The plastic ban and the finally reopened marine mammal captivity bans are both
moves to appeal to the environmentalist left. He'll probably also try to win
over unions as much as he can. He wants to eat the NDP votes and hope it's
enough to make up his loss on the right.

And I'll still probably vote for him again because the alternatives are
somehow worse.

~~~
ghettoCoder
How are they worse? If he's stuck in a cycle of corruption allegations,
appearing unintelligent or poorly prepared like you claim, and is openly and
blatantly buying votes I can only imagine the alternatives must be incredibly
poor for you to consider voting for him again. Somehow I doubt the
alternatives that bad or even that different from. It's like religion, the
more two religions are the same the more they hate the other.

Or have you bought into the negativity that every party sows against their
opponents in the hopes of securing peoples votes against their better
judgement.

------
sunkenvicar
For decades I have meticulously washed and sorted my blue bin recyclables. Now
they are banning plastics because people on the other side of the world treat
their rivers as garbage dumps.

I don’t litter. Don’t punish me.

I see this as a cynical re-election strategy. The election is in four months
and the polls are not looking good for Trudeau. Awash in scandal and forseeing
a strong Conservative turnout, he’s trying to grab votes from the Greens and
NDP.

~~~
srj
Your blue bin recyclables were shipped to Asia and then dumped into a river.
There's no economic sense to plastic recycling. The only viable strategies are
to standardize on reuse or promote materials that are recyclable (i.e.
aluminum).

~~~
brandon272
Not to mention that plenty of people are not "meticulously washing and
sorting" their recyclables and the popular method of single stream recycling
is producing contaminated recycling streams filled with trash and non-
compliant items.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-era-of-easy-
recycli...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-era-of-easy-recycling-
may-be-coming-to-an-end/)

------
deathanatos
I feel like "single-use plastics" evokes images of grocery pages, but what
about trash bags? How is trash going to be moved with such a ban?

------
blobbers
YES. The minute we accepted garbage as a fact of life, we started down the
incorrect path.

Hoping society can start correcting it.

------
3xblah
"Shoppers at East West Market in central Vancouver who decide to pay for a
plastic bag are given a bag with an embarrassing logo emblazoned on it like
"Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium," "Dr. Toews Wart Ointment Wholesale" or
"The Colon Care Co-Op.""

~~~
core-questions
I'd pay extra for those

------
Zenbit_UX
I find it amazing that in the current political and environmental climate we
live in Snapple recently decided to discontinue their infamous glass bottle in
favor of a plastic one.

------
m23khan
it really does sound great but as a Canadian, this is what I think will
happen:

\- Retail will jump right away on this bandwagon and spend massive amounts of
money advertising how they have done away with single use plastic

\- Retail will introduce alternatives and jack up price for pretty much all
their products citing cost of new materials

\- The plastics industry will complain about their loss in business (despite
majority of single use items being imported from China) and hence will jack up
prices of all their products

\- All manufacturers now using more expensive plastic will raise price of
their products

\- The poor ol' Canadian will get slapped on their faces by multiple business
layers because of this.

\- If alternatives are biodegradable, it means likely some food source or wood
product will be used hence causing increase to that source which in turn will
cause 'shortage' and 'high demand' and cause domino affect.

Sure, great for environment but the economy over here is such that, all
businesses and industries are super opportunistic and will not only pass on
cost increase to the consumer, but I suspect that they will also use this as
excuse to increase their profit margin.

Because of our oh Canada's 'Governmental' concerns, us oh Canadians will
probably end up paying 100s of dollars per year out of their own pocket...

~~~
steve_adams_86
For what it's worth, we currently externalize those 100s per year into the
commons, which is where this tragedy came from. We need to start paying real
prices for living instead of building up a debt of damage to the earth. If
that means more subsidies to those in need, great. I'll pay more in taxes
_and_ inflated living costs if it means the cost of living is more realistic.
I'll gladly forgo so many conveniences in life if it means systemic changes
which reduce pressure on the planet.

The reality is that food, energy, and many other natural resources should cost
far more than they do. The primary way they've become more affordable is
through externalizing costs and it's been a huge mistake.

------
jayess
Can anyone answer whether plastic recycling _actually happens?_ I've tried to
search around before but can't find much concrete data on how/where plastic
can actually be recycled and what it is recycled into.

~~~
fooblitzky
About 9% is recycled: [https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2018/03/06/only-9-o...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2018/03/06/only-9-of-the-worlds-plastic-is-recycled)

Recycled is really a misnomer though, more of a marketing term. Plastic can
only be down-cycled. E.g. used food containers can never be recycled into new
containers to hold food ever again. Usually after a couple of hops it's
roadbase or landfill.

------
stronglikedan
Perhaps the answer isn't looking towards recyclable, reusable, or
biodegradable plastics, but _digestible_ plastics? This is coming from a
complete layman on the topic, but something that randomly popped into my head.

------
rb808
I need bags for a bunch of things and now have to buy plastic bags online. I'd
like to buy biodegradable ones, does anyone have any recommendations how to
check for bags really will degrade?

~~~
fooblitzky
You can look for logos showing the product is certified to compost in
different environments, e.g.:

BPI: [https://bpiworld.org/BPI-Public/Program.html](https://bpiworld.org/BPI-
Public/Program.html) OK Compost: [http://www.tuv-at.be/home/](http://www.tuv-
at.be/home/)

There are others.

Note that for most it still requires industrial composting to really
decompose, and a bio-plastic bag in the ocean will be just as bad as a regular
one.

~~~
bacon_waffle
> a bio-plastic bag in the ocean will be just as bad as a regular one.

Curious if you could provide justification for this; do you mean that an
animal could just as easily choke on a bio plastic bag as a petro plastic one?

My non-biologist assumption had been that compostable plastic would just take
longer to compost without the heat and high activity in a commercial
situation. IOW, I think that we need to assume some fraction of manufactured
stuff will always end up in the ocean, so it's better that is made from bio-
than petro- materials.

------
refurb
I’m assuming this is not ALL single use plastic?

Replacing sterile plastic packages for medical devices (for example) would be
incredibly challenging.

~~~
jkaplowitz
No, they're still investigating what the exceptions should be but they are
aware that there should be some.

------
somerandomness
If 90% come from 10 rivers, shouldn't we focus on monitoring those?

------
LinuxBender
Does this mean people will have to refill their prescription medications into
the same bottle?

~~~
makerofspoons
Why can't prescriptions come in recyclable paper boxes, or glass bottles for
liquids?

~~~
OrgNet
Can you make an air-tight recyclable paper box? So that humidity/etc doesn't
get in the pills

~~~
fooblitzky
Seems like an ideal use case for a glass jar.

~~~
alacombe
Glass breaks.

