Statement by Karen Wirsig, Senior Program Manager, Plastics
Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – A report released this week by the Ocean Conservancy confirms how important Canada’s single-use plastic bans are for protecting wildlife. It only takes small amounts of plastic litter, especially plastic bags and similar flexible plastics, to kill seabirds and sea turtles who ingest it.
It’s been more than three years since ‘Big Plastic’ took Canada to court to try to stop much-needed regulations to address the plastic pollution crisis. But scientific research continues to show that plastics wreak havoc on the environment, and the links between plastics and human disease are increasingly hard to ignore.
Court action by this multinational industry has sadly served to delay much-needed further action on plastics. But regardless of what happens in the courts, it is clear that the government must find a way to move forward to protect animals, people and the environment from plastics.
Background:
- The government listed plastic manufactured items as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) in 2021 and finalized regulations to ban harmful and unnecessary single-use plastics – including checkout bags – in 2022.
- A coalition of multinational petrochemical and plastics companies, led by Dow Chemical, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals, challenged the CEPA listing in court in 2021. The lower court found in the industry’s favour in November 2023 and the government appealed that decision. The appeal hearing took place in June 2024 and an appeal decision has still not been issued.
- In 2019, before the bag ban, the federal government identified checkout bags as a highly-littered item and estimated that some 15 billion were sold or given out each year in Canada, or about nine per week for every person in the country. Since the bag ban, litter cleanup organizations have stopped finding the once-ubiquitous checkout bags during their campaigns. The latest Ocean Conservancy research confirms that getting rid of these unnecessary products is essential to protect seabirds, sea mammals and sea turtles from death.
- Environmental Defence has called for an expansion of the single-use plastics bans to include more products likely to cause harm to human health, wildlife and the environment – including plastic film overwrap, plastic pouches and cigarette filters.
- The majority of countries in the world have agreed in principle to banning single-use plastic products as part of the negotiations toward a Global Plastics Treaty.
ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Mira Merchant, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca
