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Canada aims to ban single-use plastics by 2021
- minerjoe 6y agoCan we add cigarette filters to the list? If I had a penny for every ...
- NeutronStar 6y agoThey should force companies to use biodegradable filters.
- wolco 6y agoPaper breaks down well over time. Now those black coffee lids not so much.
- NeutronStar 6y ago> 95% of cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate (a plastic), and the balance are made from papers and rayon.
- wolco 6y agoBan single use paper and cotton? If you collected each you might have a penny a piece if you could recycle into something people want like homemade face masks.
- raverbashing 6y agoIt's not cotton, it's Cellulose Acetate. Not very bio-degradable usually
- wolco 6y ago10 years maximum. https://uhs.berkeley.edu/tobaccofacts https://uhs.berkeley.edu/tobaccofacts Which is reasonanable. Styrofoam cup's are not. How quick do other things take to breakdown? Vegetables 5 days –1 month Paper 2–5 months Cotton T-shirt 6 months Orange peels 6 months Tree leaves 1 year Wool socks 1–5 years Plastic-coated paper milk cartons 5 years Leather shoes 25–40 years Nylon fabric 30–40 years Tin cans 50–100 years Aluminium cans 80–100 years Glass bottles 1 million years Styrofoam cup 500 years to forever Plastic bags 500 years to forever
- minerjoe 6y agoJust because dog-shit breaks down fast, does not give even a single dog the right to drop it on my lawn.
- nikeee 6y agoCigarette filters are the largest source of trash floating in the ocean and are usually not bio-degradable [1, 2]. They end up as micro plastics. Banning them instead of plastic straws can be seen as vastly more effetive [3]. Edit: It seems pretty useless as they essentially have no function (edit: to health), since the near-universal adoption of filters on cigarettes has not reduced harms to smokers and lung cancer rates have not declined [4]. And the color change is something that was added to make the filter to appear to be effective [5]: > The tobacco industry determined that the illusion of filtration was more important than filtration itself. It added chemicals in the filter so that its colour becomes darker when exposed to smoke (it was invented in 1953 by Claude Teague working for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company). The industry wanted filters to be seen as effective, for marketing reasons, despite not making cigarettes any less unhealthy. So trying to be rational here, they don't have any health benefits and are responsible for a large share of the microplastics in our ocean. [1]: https://www.businessinsider.de/international/new-study-shows-cigarettes-are-single-largest-source-of-ocean-trash-2018-9/ https://www.businessinsider.de/international/new-study-shows... [2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigarettes-story-of-plastic/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigar... [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigarette-butts-are-single-greatest-source-ocean-n903661 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigar... [4]: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i10 https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i10 [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_filter#Colour_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_filter#Colour_change
- wolco 6y ago"they have no function". They limit and control the amount of smoke. Provides a more consistant experience. I read your #4 source as proof. It talks about how cigarette companies tried coming up with a filter to reduce death but stopped because the filters were reducing the taste/experience. That doesn't tell us filters have no use. Include that link it tells us that in the 50s cigarette companies offered filterless and filtered versions. Customers preferred the filtered versions. You made the mistake of thinking the only purpose of filters is less death. Filters prevent tabacco from fall out, better taste, more consistant smoke, nevermind you need somewhere to hold the cigarette as it burns and without a filter you throwaway more tabacco. #5 Most cigarettes butts are not brown at least in my megacity. White is more popular. Cigarette butts can take upto 10 years to breakdown at the most. https://uhs.berkeley.edu/tobaccofacts https://uhs.berkeley.edu/tobaccofacts Single use plastics take 1,000 years. One will breakdown in your pets lifetime the other will take a millennia. We need to ban single plastic use. And perhaps dig a little deeper before making assuming associations (if cigarettes are bad the filters must be destorying the earth / meanwhile the coffee lids you get every morning is really the problem)
- grardb 6y agoYou'd have a bunch of currency that isn't really in circulation anymore, if my understanding of the Canadian penny is correct!
- frosted-flakes 6y agoThe penny is still worth one cent. It is actively being removed from circulation and isn't given as change, but you can still freely spend any you still have.
- asdff 6y agoRemoving ash trays from public life was one of the worst recent urban decisions we've made. People don't quit smoking because they can't find an ash tray, they just throw the butt on the ground and buy another pack, and no one cleans it up. Not too long ago, practically every building had one of those plastic post ash trays out front.
- seanmccann 6y agoWhich is funny because at most Canadian grocery stores they don't even offer or have paper bags. At least in Alberta.
- monadic2 6y agoI’d presume that’s the cause of this legislation.
- derefr 6y agoWhat would be the point of offering paper bags, when they can instead sell you their high-margin reusable cloth bags (which are common in Canadian grocery stores)?
- seanmccann 6y agoTo provide a convenience to customers that didn't bring a reusable bag and don't want to spend a few bucks on a bag they'll never use again and has an environmental impact 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than a single use paper or plastic bag.
- derefr 6y agoThis: > and has an environmental impact 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than a single use paper or plastic bag presumes this: > a bag they'll never use again ...right? Which seems strange to me, given that people will really only buy the bag if they are planning to use it multiple times. Measuring it as if it were a single-use bag, would be a bit like measuring the environmental impact of solar panels + batteries, as if they never generated any power (and thus never displaced any grid consumption of "spiky load" coal plants et al) and only existed as a cost of initial chemical construction.
- miohtama 6y agoHere in Gibraltar plastic bags have been banned for a while. You can buy more expensive reusable bags at the grocery store counter. First it was pain. But it took only few months to adapt and now everyone are bringing bags to the store with then. Fruit and veggie sections have paper bags, but also those sections offer canvas bags for the eco aware.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoA significant inquiry I have to this in general is what should we do for people for which single-use plastics are exceptionally necessary for their lives? For example, people with disabilities who cannot manage paper straws (due to their collapsing before a drink can be consumed) or metal straws (due to mental strain in keeping track of their cleaning)?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 542458 6y agoThe actual announcement says that Canada will ban "harmful" single-use plastics. I’d assume single use plastics that are absolutely required for safety and medical purposes would not be considered harmful.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoOK Thanks!
- asutekku 6y agoHave you ever used a paper straw? It takes ages for it to dissolve so for most people, event the disabled ones, it is not a problem.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoI personally don't have a problem but I know people who take a very long time to drink stuff.
- tomp 6y agoNo, they suck. They get soggy after a few minutes. I’d rather not use a straw at all. Which brings me to my main point. The “paper straws” movement isn’t actually anti-climate-change or pro-ecology, but just virtue signalling. If it was real, they wouldn’t be advocating paper straws, they’d be advocating no straws at all! Hint: you don’t need a straw (the vast majority of people anyways).
- chrisseaton 6y agoAren't there many legitimate uses of single-use plastics? Like medical products? What will Canada replace them with?
- derefr 6y agoIt's a law banning the use of single-use plastic for (a large number of) specific use-cases where it's unnecessary; not a law banning single-use plastics generally.
- notatoad 6y agoWhen this single-use plastics ban was in the news a year ago, there was a ton of exceptions to it. It seems like in practice this will basically amount to a ban on plastic straws and grocery bags.
- beached_whale 6y agoI suspect there will be exemptions. But it is really amazing how much there is left over from medical waste.
- abeppu 6y agoBut most people actively receive health care infrequently, compared to a daily or weekly cadence for consuming groceries or coffee or whatever. As a fraction of the plastic waste that a typical person generates, how much is medical?
- beached_whale 6y agoOne does have to watch that the solution isn't worse. Plastic packaging is cheap because it takes very little people, resources, and energy to make. A lot of the issue is that we haven't been really using market approaches to deal with it. If the creators where financially a physically responsible for the proper recycling, they would be motivated to use less and make it cheaper to reuse. The current recycling makes the problem a municipal one, in many places, who are ill equipped to deal with it... then we end up shipping it elsewhere.
- BelleOfTheBall 6y agoThere was a similar thread for Germany here recently, and I remember someone saying that most companies will just start using multi-use plastics instead of single-use ones... without reusing them. Is that really likely or am I not foolish to hope that companies will eventually just research and use more biodegradable materials?
- freeqaz 6y agoThe "biodegradable" plastics can still take a _long_ time to decompose if not put into a city compost collection bin. The city has to "biodegrade" them via a method different from what you would do at home (throw it into a heap). Wikipedia has a list of plastics that are approved for "home composting" here[0]. Plus, these plastics still take a lot of energy to produce. I definitely think that multi-use plastics make the most sense, if we can build the supply chain to get there. Sort of like how old glass milk bottles worked: You left them out and they were collected by the milk man. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic#Home_compostable_plastics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic#Home_com...
- fny 6y agoThe path of least resistance and cost will always be taken. So if I can sell you a product in a multi-use container, pass the cost to you, and you decide to throw it away after a single use, that's what's going to happen. If instead it's more affordable to use compostable plastics or non-plastics (e.g. aluminum), then that's what will be done. My hunch is with low oil prices and the high cost to manufacture biodegradable plastics, the first path may unfortunately become popular (biodegradable plastics runs for roughly 10x standard plastic.)
- api 6y agoThis is what I see in California with the bag ban. People use multi use bags once, resulting in a net increase in plastic use. This is a hard problem. A ban will not fix it and may have perverse effects like increasing usage and pollution. What is so damn bad about paper? Paper is mostly renewable (or can be) and is very biodegradable. Why not just make better paper bags
- derefr 6y agoInteresting side-note: here in Vancouver BC, we were full steam ahead on eliminating plastics (e.g. styrofoam take-out containers, plastic drinking straws, shopping bags, etc.) but that was seemingly all instantly reversed once social distancing started. I can understand the reversal of charging for shopping bags to encourage bringing reusable bags: reusable bags are potentially a disease vector. But what's with the reintroduction of plastic straws over paper, and the reintroduction of styrofoam over paper boxes? A temporary cost-reduction measure, allowing the using-up of old stock these businesses had laying around?
- soared 6y agoLikely major swings in demand combined with supply chains being affected. Change is tough during normal times, but toss in a global pandemic and...
- MagnumPIG 6y agoPaper straws were never actually better for the environment.
- catalogia 6y ago> I can understand the reversal of charging for shopping bags to encourage bringing reusable bags: reusable bags are potentially a disease vector. I don't understand the rationale of not letting me bag my own groceries in my own bag. I'm not asking them to touch it, anymore than I ask them to touch my fabric jacket. Nor am I aware of any evidence of covid transmission through proximity to textile bags. The ban seems utterly senseless. I bought my bag years ago at Trader Joes but they no longer let me use it, so I no longer shop at Trader Joes. There are other grocery stores nearby that are being less unreasonable.
- userbinator 6y agoUnlike clothing, bags touch a lot more things, and being textile means that contaminants are easily absorbed and more difficult to remove. That's the argument I've heard, in any case.
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- miohtama 6y agoWhen China, India, Indonesia and orhers do this we are making true progress. Though not sure what would be the process to get this thru in United States?
- fareesh 6y agoI remember reading somewhere that some bottled product replaced plastic with glass, which weighs more, which led to an increase in trucks required, which led to more of a carbon footprint, which is also bad.
- dumpHero2 6y agoI wonder what prevents them from bottling locally? It's cheaper and better for the environment. It feels like industries can always circumvent these one off laws. They should think of a whole framework of laws.
- nickff 6y agoMy understanding is that bottling and container manufacturing are fairly localized. Each large city will usually have a set of bottling plants, to reduce transportation cost. I think it is easy to underestimate how optimized production and distribution are.
- asdff 6y agoBudweiser brews their beer at 12 different regional anchor breweries to optimize distribution. At Ohio State, Natural Light is a local beer.
- Retric 6y agoOrders of magnitude are important. Post consumer recycling involves extra transportation and thus greenhouse emissions. Except the energy savings can more than make up for this.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoThis is why a carbon tax makes a lot of sense. Increase the cost of doing the wrong thing and let the market decide.
- therealdrag0 6y agoAnd a recycling tax. Carbon isn’t the only externality we care about.
- rapind 6y agoCan we all agree that plastic packaging has gotten ridiculous? If I buy toys for my kids they're 90% packaging, 10% toy... It's baffling. Who's the consumer demanding this?
- spankalee 6y agoOr sugar that used to come in cardboard boxes for decades now coming in plastic bags. And so many glass jars replaced by plastic.
- sneak 6y agoI fail to see the harm in this. Who or what is harmed by an inert piece of plastic sitting safely in a landfill? Edit: this isn’t rhetoric, but a legitimate inquiry.
- novok 6y agoThere is a leakage issue with plastic waste, and a bunch ends up in the ocean, in the wild where animals eat it, in the water table and so on.
- sneak 6y agoHow does my garbage end up in the ocean?
- asdff 6y agoNo one, but that plastic could have been better used and as much new plastic wouldn't have to be produced. Earth is experiencing death by a thousand cuts, lets make it a hundred cuts if we can.
- lopmotr 6y agoIf it's about wasting resources (oil) then isn't that already priced into plastics? When oil prices rise higher, these near-frivolous uses of plastics will naturally reduce. Using oil in itself doesn't kill the Earth. It does nothing useful under the ground. You're falling into the common trap anthropomorphizing the Earth and applying human-like feelings to it.
- aritraghosh007 6y agoWhat justifies from keeping anyone to not implement the ban on single-use plastics right away? Is it just the loss in revenue and labor from the petrochemical industries?
- chrisseaton 6y agoNot having alternatives to replace them with?
- aritraghosh007 6y agoPaper/jute bags and multi-use plastics have been in circulation for quite some time now.
- chrisseaton 6y agoWhat do you replace a single-use plastic catheter with? Wash it and use it again?
- icegreentea2 6y agoAs we all recently discovered, it takes time for global supply chains to adjust to demand.
- gruez 6y ago>Paper/jute bags not sure about "jute bags" (whatever that is), but paper bags have worse climate impact than plastic bags. >and multi-use plastics have been in circulation for quite some time now. Those don't really work if they're used for packaging, because the rely on the end-user to reuse it. If they don't they probably have worse environmental impact.
- chrisseaton 6y agoIt's what ropes are usually made of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jute
- smileysteve 6y agoOne way to reduce consumer plastic pollution could be decrease the use of small bottles. If water came in 1l bottles instead of 20oz bottles people may not just forget about them after a sip. Plus, the volume add uses less plastic than the structural elements of 2 bottles.
- jariel 6y agoGreat initiative, but these political edicts are not useful, and 2021 is too soon. What we need is a structured approach, that analyses all of the kinds of use, how realistically dependant we are on all of them, probably some strategic alignment from gov. and a phased approach with more time. Canadian ministers of industry are rife with any number of 'PowerPoint Programs' for this or that, that are again in the category of 'business sentiment' and often completely miss the mark. I would really love to see the Minsters, or at very least the heads of their Bureaucracy - actually have an operational business background. We've established that our Ministers of Finance have to have 'credentials' - why on Earth we don't demand the same from our business related ministers is astonishing. They could be identifying most of the use, talking a lot with the entities most affected, researching alternatives, lining up suppliers, poking in maybe in highly-specific areas, possibly with some truly progressive alternatives with intelligently focused investment, and at least proving some kind of 'phased transition framework'. Much like when Sweden went from 'Left Lane' to 'Right Lane' driving, there needs to be plan. A lot of business right now are facing truly existential calamity, to have a politician pull this out and say 'you have 6 months to change' is just not good. I also feel that 'any rule can be hacked' and we're going to see all sorts of externalities from this, specifically glass. Plastic is a really useful material, and that we don't want it in the Ocean's means we have to change, but not necessarily along he lines he's taking - in fact - the edict, were it followed to the tee, might not change many things other than in the minds of voters. I would love to see a comprehensive plan for how we can tackled plastic waste, it will not come from the PM's office.
- Negitivefrags 6y agoThis movement is really dumb. Plastic pollution in the ocean is a problem, but it’s not the western countries causing it. There are 10 rivers that cause 90% of plastic pollution, and they are in Africa and Asia. Plastic in a landfill harms nobody. The worst part is that people somehow have this linked in thier mind with climate change, as in fixing plastic pollution is going to help with that. Well if anything, it’s going to make it marginally worse because the replacements for single use plastics consume more energy. Meanwhile this also has a pretty disproportionate amount of inconvenience for the public, continuing the “Environmental issues are about your personal sacrifice” message which is both unnessissary (companies can have a much Larger impact without you sacrificing anything) and counterproductive. This is the politicians fallicy in action.
- mynegation 6y agoIt is not dumb. It is about setting an example. We cannot fix everything everywhere, but we can move the needle. Maybe a youth living near one of those 10 rivers, reading about Canada doing it, will become a member of parliament or a minister and will do something about it. Or not. Maybe here in Canada out of necessity we come up with smart solutions to replaces single use plastics that can be copied all over the world. Or not. But what we can do, we shall, and as a Canadian, I am fully behind this decision.
- lopmotr 6y agoAre you sure there isn't a cheaper way to get the same effect? Doing a giant useless action just to set an example to others for whom it's not so useless doesn't seem like the obvious first choice.
- vimy 6y agoInstead of setting an example we could just pay for waste management programs in Asia and Africa and be done with it. Would be cheaper, faster and more convenient than the current ban all plastics movement.
- gruez 6y ago>We cannot fix everything everywhere, but we can move the needle. Maybe a youth living near one of those 10 rivers, reading about Canada doing it, will become a member of parliament or a minister and will do something about it. This kind of attitude only makes sense if it doesn't cost anything. Doubling our CO2 usage (assuming we switched to paper bags)[1], just so we can virtue signal to kids in third world countries is asinine. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf#page=7 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- fareesh 6y agoIs it possible that due to issues of politics and optics that serious scientists / engineers are unable to work on solutions like "hemp plastic"? Admittedly as a layperson I am guilty of wondering whether it is just one of those crazy ideas the marijuana enthusiasts are pushing, or whether it has any legitimate potential. Has this material been given any serious consideration?
- xkcd-sucks 6y agoIs this "hemp plastic" like polyethylene made from hemp feedstock, or is it something like reformed cellulose? And what makes hemp different from corn or soybeans in this application? There's active development and use of biomanufacturing of common chemicals because it has the potential to be much cheaper and less complicated than existing processes. For example, fermenting sugar directly into ethylene at room temperature/atmospheric pressure using engineered yeast is simpler and safer than converting ethanol into ethylene in a multi step process involving high temperature and pressure, hydrogen feedstock, platinum catalyst, etc. Assuming you actually have bugs that can do the one step conversion. But if this ethylene is polymerized into polyethylene and made into 6-pack rings, those are going to kick around for a thousand years in the ocean shedding microplastics and choking birds regardless of whether they were manufactured in a biological or "traditional" process. Likewise, if the input to a biomanufacturing process is roundup-ready soy ("worst of the best"), that could be worse for the environment than a "traditional" catalytic cracking process fed by recycled plastic ("best of the worst")
- BTCOG 6y agoQuite a bit of difference from other plants. Hemp grows a very large woody stalk and can grow 6+ feet tall and resemble a small Christmas tree-sized pine tree in one season. Cannabis produces oils/sap much like a pine tree and these oils are super conducive to polymers. Soybeans do not, are tiny, and don't suck CO2 from the air like an air purifier.
- BTCOG 6y agoIt's very real and very much already exists. I've met a few biochemists who are manufacturing it in the Denver, Colorado area and it absolutely blows my mind that we are not growing thousands of acres of industrial hemp for both controlling CO2 and for all it's bioplastic, wood, and material products it can be making. Stop growing cotton. Stop using crude oil based plastics, and all products of the plant can be used in extracts for foods, oils, and stalk/pithe/flour can be made into paper products and hempcrete.
- octorian 6y agoI still find it hilarious how we were going all in on "Ban All The Single Use Plastics!" over the past year, then the pandemic hit, and everyone pretty much threw the whole idea out the window. Now reusable anything is seen as a disease vector, and banished. Makes me wonder what'll happen when the pandemic situation finally winds down.
- antisthenes 6y agoSingle use plastics are such a red-herring. I remember flying Lufthansa, where the crew asked us to reuse plastic cups for water in the name of being eco-friendly. The hilarious thing was that we were onboard a giant 747-8, that was 70% empty. Obviously it's not an either/or situation, but that banning single-use plastics is anywhere near even the top 10 things that we could be doing is laughable. I doubt it would even make the top 100.
- lopmotr 6y agoIt's highly visible in people's daily lives so they pressure politicians into it. It's not meant to solve any actual environmental problem, just a pointless populist policy.
- Deimorz 6y agoThis is from over a year ago. There's some more recent info in this article from January 30: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-canada-report-plastics-ban-1.5445611 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-canada-report-p...
- BTCOG 6y agoI find it interesting that nobody seems to know that hemp polymers and hemp bioplastics are readily available, and exist. https://hempplastic.com/products/ https://hempplastic.com/products/ I've held hemp plastic packaging in my hands in Denver, it works well. If we'd start ramping up the industrial hemp production it is also one of the best things for the entire planet for carbon neutral and even net negative in the long term. Cannabis is the highest consuming agricultural crop of CO2 on the planet. It grows at such an accelerated rate highly balances photosynthesis and quickly grows; eating CO2 like monsters. Turn the flower into cannabinoid extracts and foods, seed into food products, and all hemp stalk and pithe is then turned into bioplastics and hempcrete and various other wood products, like paper.
- catsdanxe 6y agoBan plastic bags at grocery stores so I am forced to purchase thicker ones instead.