The federal government announced recently that it would move toward banning single-use plastics in sa国际传媒 as early as 2021.
The to-be-banned list includes plastic straws, cotton swabs, drink stirrers, plates, cutlery and balloon sticks, as well as fast-food containers and cups made of expanded polystyrene, similar to white Styrofoam.
In some ways, the federal government is playing catch-up with what is happening in communities here in sa国际传媒
Victoria鈥檚 ban on single-use plastic bags came into effect last July. Tofino and Ucluelet鈥檚 combined plastic-bag- and-straw ban kicked off this month. As of July 1, Qualicum Beach businesses will stop providing customers with single-use plastic checkout bags or plastic straws. Deep Cove and Vancouver both passed motions banning plastic straws last year. Saanich and Sooke are also moving ahead on bag bans.
In a unanimous vote in September, sa国际传媒 municipal leaders called on the province to ban plastic shopping bags once and for all.
In 2017, an interesting report was released: Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea, by Christian Schmidt et al., in Environmental Science & Technology. A study of 57 river systems around the world illustrates how almost 95 per cent of plastic debris ending up in the oceans comes from just 10聽rivers.
China鈥檚 Yangtze River, by far, contributes the largest amount. The remaining top 10 has all the other rivers in the world combined outside of Asia and Africa, in third place. Seven Asian and two African rivers, individually, are on the list.
The study roughly confirms results of a Dutch 2017 study that shows 11 of the 20 countries producing the most plastic waste are in Asia.
The rivers contributing the most plastic waste have two traits in common. They run through densely populated regions, and those regions lack adequate waste-management systems and infrastructure.
sa国际传媒 has an advantage in terms of population.
We also have waste-management systems and infrastructure. Despite that, we get an overall failing grade. sa国际传媒 as a whole recycles only nine per cent of the plastic used here.
British Columbia does better. Recycle sa国际传媒 recycles more than 90 per cent of residential materials collected across the province. It also processes most of them, sending less than one per cent of residential plastics collected overseas for processing. However, even in sa国际传媒, some municipalities refuse some kinds of plastics or require people to bring them to specialized depots.
One might suggest the studies mentioned above capture some of sa国际传媒鈥檚 plastic waste that has been displaced. Because we ship plastic waste to Asia for processing, some of the plastics that are found in Asian rivers there might have come from sa国际传媒.
From the 1980s until 2018, China accepted much of our plastic waste, using the country鈥檚 cheap labour to sort and recycle it. Indonesia, Thailand and 鈥� as noted in high-profile international garbage-shipping incidents 鈥� the Philippines and Malaysia also have imported recyclables from sa国际传媒 and elsewhere for processing.
Studies tracking these overseas industries show they salvage only what is valuable, then landfill, burn or simply dump the rest. With the inadequate environmental regulations, it is highly likely that some of that discarded plastic is blown or swept into rivers 鈥� where researchers might sample it 鈥� thereby skewing the reality behind the studies鈥� results.
Furthermore, once shipments of recyclables leave our shores, they often enter an informational black hole. Only rarely are they tracked to final reprocessing. Only rarely can we confirm that it is indeed being recycled as intended.
And the quality of the plastic waste shipped from sa国际传媒 can be a problem, as seen in the two recent spats with the Philippine and Malaysian governments about shipments from our country of plastics being contaminated with kitchen and body waste and other garbage.
Ottawa鈥檚 announcement and subsequent action might go some length at cleaning up the country鈥檚 reputation abroad and further developing the recycling industry and programs here at home.
