Hon. Rosa Galvez: Honourable senators, I rise today as critic of Bill S-234, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, a bill that will prohibit the export of certain types of plastic waste to foreign countries for final disposal.

This bill is the same as former Bill C-204, for which I had given a speech as critic in the last Parliament before the election. My position on this bill has not changed: I agree with the main principles of the bill.

As you know, my thoughts on plastic and pollution are informed by my three-decade career as a civil and environmental engineer assessing and solving pollution and contamination problems created by domestic or hazardous industrial waste. I have witnessed first-hand the negative impacts of our irresponsible and ever-growing waste-producing habits and mishandling of toxic substances. Typical landfill operations stockpile all kinds of domestic objects that could have been recycled but instead become macro- and microplastics that will find their way to soil and water, initiating their path into ecosystems, food chains and, ultimately, wildlife and human organs.

The mismanagement of plastic waste creates social, environmental and health problems that put at risk the well-being of our communities and future generations. The entire planet recognizes we have a major global plastic waste problem. That is why the United Nations Environment Assembly started a process in February 2022 to develop a legally binding agreement by 2024 to end plastic pollution, and the G7 countries have committed, this last April, to “. . . end plastic pollution, with the ambition to reduce additional plastic pollution to zero by 2040.”

Colleagues, the situation is dire. Every year, 13 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, pollute the waters and destroy marine ecosystems. Once these plastics enter the ocean currents, they are unlikely to leave the area until they degrade into smaller microplastics under the effects of the sun, waves and marine life. This has led to the formation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Please Google it and watch it; it’s incredible. It’s a mass of floating plastic that covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometres. It is the area equivalent to our province of Quebec. At this rate, and if we do nothing, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.

High-income countries generate more waste per person, and thus Canada is part of the problem. With an estimated 1.3 billion metric tonnes of waste per person in 2017, Canada unfortunately ranks as the most wasteful country per capita, and our waste problem is increasing.

With respect to plastic waste, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada’s report in 2019, we generated 3.3 million tons of plastic waste in 2016, with only 9% of it being properly recycled, 4% being incinerated for energy recovery and an incredible 86% being sent to landfills. But we also mismanage or avoid managing plastic waste, since we export it to developing countries. Waste export per capita in Canada is almost 5 kilograms per day, less than the U.K. with 9.5 kilograms, but more than the U.S. with almost 2 kilograms per day.

The plastic producer representing almost half of total plastic waste in Canada is the packaging industry, followed by the automotive, textile, electrical and electronic equipment, and construction sectors.

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In fact, more than 60% of all extracted natural resources end up as waste. How shocking! How ineffective and inefficient! This economic model is totally outdated. It relies on the false and illogical premise that our planet has unlimited resources and that we can grow infinitely. Such a system does not exist on our planet, so we need to transform the outdated linear economic model into a circular economic model.

We need to learn how to use our natural resources more effectively, prevent goods and materials from becoming waste for as long as possible and transform unavoidable waste into new resources. Those are the principles of a circular economy that would dramatically reduce pollution caused by our overconsumption.

Bill S-234 would prohibit the export of plastic waste. The idea is that, by banning waste exports, we will be forced to manage it better. There is no reference to ways to reduce the production of single-use plastics or to changes to potential rules governing minimum recycled plastic content in new products. There is no mention of penalties for the use of plastic. However, that could be a workable strategy because it would force us to look closely at the problem right here at home.

[English]

In recent years, governments around the world have announced policies to reduce the volume of single-use plastic, banning products like single-use straws, disposable cutlery, food containers, cotton swabs, bags, et cetera. Last July, California became the first U.S. state to announce its own targets, including a drop of 25% in the sale of plastic packaging by 2032. In December, the U.K. extended its list of banned items to include single-use trays, balloons and some types of polystyrene cups and food containers. Bans are also in place in the European Union, Australia and India, among other places.

The Single-use Plastics Prohibition Regulations are part of the Government of Canada’s comprehensive plan to address pollution, meet its target of zero plastic waste by 2030 and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The regulations prohibit the manufacture, import and sale of single-use plastic checkout bags, cutlery and food service ware made from or containing problematic plastics. But we know this is not enough.

Indeed, to domestically solve our plastic problem, we need to rethink and reduce plastic production. Recycling must be scaled up fast enough to deal with the amount of plastic being produced, and recycled plastic needs to find its way into new products, with contents not less than 50%.

According to a Plastic Waste Makers Index report, just two companies in the petrochemical industry are recycling and producing recycled polymers at scale: Taiwan’s conglomerate Far Eastern New Century and Thailand’s Indorama Ventures, the world’s largest producer of recycled PET for drink bottles.

Yet, Indorama Ventures is also number 4 on a list of 20 of the world’s biggest producers of virgin polymers used in single-use plastic. The list is led by U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil, China’s Sinopec and another U.S. heavyweight, Dow. In making polymers bound for single-use plastic, those 20 companies generated around 450 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions around the world, the same amount of total emissions as the United Kingdom, according to Carbon Trust and Wood Mackenzie.

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Actions to ensure sustainable waste management must follow a clear sequence: reduction at the source, reuse, recycling, energy recovery and encapsulating final waste materials. This is the waste management model advocated by waste management experts around the world.

Historically, however, Canada has chosen to focus on the third option, creating a recycling industry. We have created an entire recycling industry that is not very efficient. Our recycled materials are used very little in the manufacture of new products. Packaging manufacturers, advocates for planned obsolescence and those who waste materials do not assume any responsibility. Our waste management is a total failure. By skipping the first two steps of sound waste management, we are massively diminishing our opportunities to reduce waste. Worse yet, we are placing the burden of this waste on developing countries, who often do not have the necessary capacity to dispose of it properly.

[English]

So, colleagues, where are we with our plastic waste? Where does it currently end up? Most of our plastic waste — well above 90% — is exported to the United States, with other countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Honduras, Turkey and Chile receiving the rest.

The trade of plastic waste is internationally regulated by the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, which was adopted in 1989 as a response to the mounting controversy over wealthy nations exporting hazardous waste to developing countries that did not have the capacity to adequately manage it and provoking massive environmental and health issues. This agreement aims to reduce hazardous waste, restrict the transboundary movement of hazardous waste except to nations capable of environmentally sound management and create a regulatory system to frame permissible trade of hazardous waste.

Although Canada ratified in December 2020 new amendments to the Basel Convention “requiring prior informed-consent controls for all but the cleanest types of plastic-waste exports traded between treaty parties,” unfortunately, the United States hasn’t done so, which has many experts worried about a 2020 bilateral agreement with the Americans, allowing exports of plastic waste to the south with less strict controls than the Basel Convention and possible re-exportation to developing countries.

With heavily mediatized cases of international waste disputes involving Canada in the past few years, I cannot say that I am confident our plastic waste will be adequately managed under our current agreements.

In conclusion, I repeat that I completely agree with the principle and intent of Bill S-234. It is time that we take responsibility for the waste we produce. For centuries, the wealthy nations of the world have imposed a burden on developing countries by making them deal with our toxic waste. The world is not our dumping ground — and to continue to act as though it is reinforces colonial tendencies. Our wealth is not justification for the lack of accountability for our own waste; in fact, it should be quite the opposite. We have some of the highest capacities in the world to manage waste in an environmentally sound way.

I believe that this is an issue that needs a detailed and careful study to compare this bill’s proposal and see its harmonization with other domestic and international initiatives, especially given the potential impacts on interprovincial and international trade, and the fact that it affects many sectors. I hope that the committee study will examine how this plastic waste export ban will impact Canada’s capacity to manage its own waste. I also expect the study to determine how this bill would interact with our current and upcoming international agreements, including the potential legally binding agreement on plastics. Finally, I hope that the study will also consider the effects of the single-use plastic ban which is seeing a staggered implementation until 2025.

Colleagues, I hope you will all agree to send this bill to committee. Thank you. Meegwetch.

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