Canada Plans To Ban 'Harmful' Single-Use Plastics By 2021 307
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Monday that Canada will ban many single-use plastic items by 2021, including bags, straws, cutlery and stirring sticks, to cut harmful waste damaging the country's ecosystems. CNN reports: Trudeau announced the measures Monday, describing "a problem we simply can't ignore." "Plastic waste ends up in our landfills and incinerators, litters our parks and beaches, and pollutes our rivers, lakes, and oceans, entangling and killing turtles, fish, and marine mammals," the Canadian leader said in a statement. "Less than 10 per cent of plastic used in Canada gets recycled. Without a change in course, Canadians will throw away an estimated $11 billion worth of plastic materials each year by 2030." Trudeau said his government will work with companies that use or create plastic products to set targets on waste.
Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Canadian, I can tell you that this is only about the federal election to happen this year [wikipedia.org] and the Trudeau government looking for YouTube popular things to make new promises around.
Our problem is not plastic straws. Our problem is that we don't take responsibility for our garbage. Trash belongs in landfills and buried so it doesn't blow in the wind to the oceans. Or burned as fuel for energy to do something else. Instead, we load thousands of tons of it onto ships to float 1000s of km over the oceans to other countries [www.cbc.ca] with hope they will "recycle" it.
Our belief in bullshit "recycling" that puts tons of plastic into the rivers of foreign countries, and ultimately to the oceans, is what needs fixing.
Banning useful things because of YouTube videos while ignoring real responsibility is pretty much a summary of the Trudeau government.
There are more cigarette butts polluting beach shores than there are plastic straws. And cigarettes 100% cost our public health care system millions. But there's no viral YouTube videos about that. So an election promise to ban useful things like plastic straws, forks, and coffee cups it is!
Re:Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, smokers contribute more in taxes than they cost in care. Way back in university I had a professor who liked to assign us to write essays taking contradictory points of view. I got assigned to argue that smoking is good. So I did the research, ran the numbers, and yup, from an economic perspective, smokers were a boon (and still are). So I wrote an entertaining essay about how anti-smoking campaigns are unethical and we should be encouraging more people to smoke, for the good of the country. I got a good mark, with the comment "maybe a bit over the top".
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If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you. The typical cost of treating lung cancer far exceeds the lifetime taxes on tobacco of a typical smoker.
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Not all smokers get lung cancer. Many die of cheaper things. And many people who don't smoke also require expensive care. Also, most cancer treatment (in Canada) isn't really that expensive. Smokers pay a *lot* in taxes.
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Are you aware that most of that plastic is manufactured from waste byproducts of the energy sector?
Crude oil is refined into gasoline, kerosene, naphtha, light oil, heavy oil, etc, and the naphtha is then used to make plastic.
Until such time as we have completely eliminated oil and natural gas from our energy infrastructure... what is it that you think we should do with the naphtha?
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We could always just burn it. But, if we're going to just burn it.... why not burn the plastic?
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We could always just burn it. But, if we're going to just burn it.... why not burn the plastic?
Environmentalists and NIMBY nuts. Take a look at the number of attempts just in Canada for companies to try and build W2E facilities, which are still tied up in courts 25 years later. Or the communities that don't want them in their backyard(even if it's +50km away). The W2E in London, Ontario has been shutdown 20? 25 years now and it was processing nearly 70% of all the trash for a population of ~350k at the time. It also provided hot boiler water for all three nearby hospitals, heating, energy for the
What problem is this solving? (Score:2)
What problem will a first world nation like Canada solve by banning single use plastic? Will it be worth the cost?
We use plastic in a lot of stuff because it is both cheap and durable which means any substitutes found for plastic will likely cost more and / or be inferior. Meanwhile, the vast majority of first world nation's garbage ends up properly disposed of in landfill of which there won't be a shortage of for more than a thousand years (at least in large countries like Canada and the US) which means th
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Just to show you how old I am I remember back when the milk we got at school came with paper straws. They didn't last for much more than one use but they were fully biodegradable. Then plastic straws were all that was used. Now we are going back to using paper straws.
The only reason that plastic straws were so prevalent is that they were cheap to produce. This is just another indication of the short shortsightedness of the "free market". The reason we are still using "thousand-year plastic on items" is beca
They are (Score:3)
A country as big as the U.S. can take a long time to move. But thankfully with a state system some states can move much faster than others, which means supply for things like good single use straws increases and gets cheaper, which means other states adopt them... So the U.S. is moving fast, just not the whole. I think we are moving faster than Europe for example, and in terms of sheer number of people affected I would claim the U.S. is already ahead of the entirety of Canada.
I am totally on board with t
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Plastic straws cost a fraction of a penny less, and in the US that matters.
I'll tell you a story about fire dampers in the US. They are basically vents with fire-proof shutters that stop fire spreading around a building by closing when the temperature exceeds a certain threshold.
There are two types, one that uses a $1 spring to close and one that relies on gravity. The gravity closed ones only work when mounted vertically and the right way up. In Europe you can only get sprung dampers, and they just work no
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within a few months I saw different, recyclable straws appearing in restaurants. They're perfectly fine!
The paper ones disintegrate before I can finish my drink. Maybe I'm a slow drinker.
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Exactly this. Make your own choices. Don't use government thugs to force other people to choose how you think they should choose.
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Who is your benevolent dictator and what happens when he forces you to do something you don't like "for the greater good"?
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>a proper ruler or ruling class.
nothing stopping you running for office. I don't understand what you mean by "proper ruling class". Sounds like a convenient excuse you make to skirt your responsibility for being a citizen.
>I am forced to work
No your not. You are not entitled to labor of others.
>over regions of the world I have no beef with (to devastating consequence
A giant has giant ripples.
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You're not compelled to work because it's taxed a way you don't like.
That point stands, you are not forced to work.
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my people lack a proper ruler or ruling class
There is no such thing.
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Except for, many many immigrants are fleeing the USA to Canada through illegal border crossings in Quebec, to the point where Canada has set up stations there to process asylum seekers who don't want to be deported to harmed by Trump's immigration policies. Canada is spending $1B to combat this, since apparently the words written on the Statue of Liberty are no longer valid... "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these,
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Re: Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:4, Informative)
Quebec separatism is pretty much dead. The separatists were the youth in the 70s and their numbers are dwindling through attrition. Today's young and middle aged don't have much sympathy for that stuff. The current CAQ government pays enough lip service to Quebec nationalism to get some of the older generation's vote, but not enough to alienate everyone else.
The west, meaning Alberta and maybe Saskatchewan, gets pissed every time a Trudeau is in office. Alberta was a place where you could make well into the six figures without graduating from high school. Now it's a place where it's slightly harder to do that. Despite the rhetoric, nobody's going anywhere.
No, there aren't any cities where English or French isn't the dominant language. Some first generation immigrants speak limited English, and a very few have some weird beliefs, but the vast majority come to Canada (or the US, or Europe) because they admire that lifestyle. Canada and the US have gone through waves of immigration before. Irish, Scottish, Vietnamese, Korean. If you read the news of the time, all of those groups produced the same hand wringing. Today their kids are as Canadian or American as anyone else.
Re: Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/... [www.cbc.ca]
https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
How many more articles would you like (you did ask for just one).
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Most of the southern immigrants trying to get into the US are not Mexican either. They come from farther south and move through Mexico on the way to the US.
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Parent post didn't say that it was Americans that were involved ("many many immigrants are fleeing the USA to Canada"). They are immigrants (to Canada) no matter where they come from.
It also doesn't invalidate the statement that the "words written on the Statue of Liberty are no longer valid".
Re: Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Why can't the US be a leader? (Score:2, Funny)
Plastics saw almost no use in the 1940s in America, even after the war. So returning to that situation, where plastics aren't used, is exactly what the political left is screaming about wanting now. Even when President Trump gives leftists exactly what they want, they still manage to hate him and cry about it.
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Firstly straws are basically unnecessary for 99% of the population. Hardly ever used them growing up and back then they where in fact mostly paper. I remember having a novelty curley plastic straw but we almost never use them and they where long ago disposed off. As an adult I almost never use them. Hell my just turned five niece does not use them.
Want to do something for the environment stop using straws whether paper or plastic altogether.
What about plastic bottles? (Score:3)
They're used only once as well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Canada has deposits on cans and glass and plastic beverage bottles, and has had for ages. When I was a kid I remember collecting beer bottles to buy film.
Yes, mod parent up! (Score:2)
informative
Re:What about plastic bottles? (Score:4, Interesting)
They're used only once as well.
Not always. I refill mine and it is very convenient when travelling since if I happen to forget it somewhere or I use it so much it fails then it is cheap and easy to replace. Lots of airports now have refill stations next to water fountains because you can also take an empty bottle through security and fill it up on the other side. I would hate to see these banned but a small deposit would discourage throw away use while still providing a cheap source of bottles for travellers.
The plastic deluge (Score:5, Informative)
Go to a restaurant and you were served on washable plates with "silverware" that wasn't thrown away.
Paper or Plastic? At one time there were only paper bags for groceries.
Plastic Straws? I remember in the 90s when all of a sudden every fucking glass of water had to have a straw in it. All of a sudden everyone was scared shitless of drinking out of the side of a glass?!? It turned into a peer pressure thing to drink out of a straw, for everything.
Then came all manner of over the top packaging made out of super thick military grade plastics. It took a chain saw to get into these packages.
Bottled water, etc, etc
Human civilization(and the environment) would be just fine if most of this useless crap was phased out.
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Yes, at one point in the 90s we realized how much damage we were doing to the planet, and switched away from needlessly burning fuel and bulldozing trees to create worthless grocery bags that could hardly fit anything and needed external support on the bottoms and sides to stay together for even the single use they were intended for.
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Plastic Straws? I remember in the 90s when all of a sudden every fucking glass of water had to have a straw in it.
Bingo! Why the hell do beverages need to be sucked through a straw to begin with? Milkshakes, yes. Juice boxes, yes, but there could probably be a better design. Everything else, just drink it from the container.
Lifelong Professional Recyclers are Skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
As a pro, and resident of a USA state that just passed the same ban (Vermont), I have to say I'm skeptical that this will do more than make people feel like they did something. 1) it has nothing at all to do with ocean litter (that comes from 10 large coastal cities in emerging markets who need traditional solid waste and litter and stormwater management). 2) it has not been shown to decrease the amount of plastic, as the bags are replaced by durable plastic which has to be used a minimun number of times before it breaks even (and the replacement 'straws' have had no lifecycle analysis test at all).
What generally works better is a deposit or price system, forcing people to pay for straws and bags. There's a good argument to be made that people who don't use or need single use plastic should not be subsidizing "free" ones (and human response to anything that appears to be "free" is to consume more of it, logically or not). An even better argument can be made towards reforming the General Mining Act of 1872 and other raw material extraction subsidies worldwide, so that the economics of single use or durables are recognized by liberals, conservatives, and uncritical minds alike.
One last problem is "moral licensing". People who "vote for" or "support" proposals that are "grasping at straws" generally suffer from undue sense of righteousness, proven to increase liberties taken in other environmental impact spheres.
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that comes from 10 large coastal cities in emerging markets who need traditional solid waste and litter and stormwater management
False. Re-read the original source material. Of all waste that flows to the oceans directly from rivers most of it comes from just 10 rivers. The reality outside of that small subset of total waste that makes it to the oceans is that it's actually a worldwide problem.
And I'm very specific here, read the *source* material. There are plenty of online news articles talking about 10 cities discharging into 10 rivers which have misquoted the study because... well... scientific reporting is dead.
What generally works better is a deposit or price system, forcing people to pay for straws and bags.
Deposit systems w
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Generally stores are required to charge 5c each for plastic bags in most of Canada. More significant than the charge is that you have to go ask for them. Plastic bags have been replaced by durable mostly-fabric bags (all the stores sell them, cheap), not heavy duty plastic. I have a new one now, but the old one lasted well over ten years.
Charging a dollar for a plastic straw in a restaurant would definitely reduce their use.
Re: Lifelong Professional Recyclers are Skeptical (Score:2)
Using a paper bag a couple of times then putting recyclables in it sounds like a win over single use bags.
I like the reusable bag. Itâ(TM)s stronger so you can put a lot more in it, and you can use it for other things when not grocery shopping. Most of the people I know use them. I suspect youâ(TM)d use more than 42 paper bags in a decade too. Also, the replacement I recently got was free, so youâ(TM)d have to go another decade to keep up.
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I'm skeptical that this will do more than make people feel like they did something.
Feelings are the same as facts nowadays so it's all good!
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(that comes from 10 large coastal cities in emerging markets who need traditional solid waste and litter and stormwater management).
I would seriously donate to help them fix that problem.
Devolution of Civilization. (Score:2)
We created Technology and Civilization and then it just gets abandoned.
Remembers when Los Angeles didn't have medieval diseases.
good for most (Score:2)
Banning harmful things (Score:3, Funny)
Let's start by banning Trudeau.
Harmful? Check.
Plastic? Check.
Single-use? I hope so...
...laura
Time (Score:2)
Omfg in 20 years robots can scour the lands for this waste and pick it up. And rip open landfills and process them, for that matter.
Spock: "He is intelligent, but only thinks in 3 dimensions."
Go for it - but seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Last night, I watched a BBC special on the situation in the UK. Since China isn't taking their plastic anymore, they ship it to Malaysia. 132,000 tons last year. And in Malaysia, the people they pay to take the stuff? Lots of them just take the money and pile up the plastic in the jungle. Where it disintegrates, blows around, and ultimately washes down the rivers into the ocean. Or, maybe worse, they set fire to it in the open.
Around half of that waste is related to the kitchen: shopping bags, plastic tubs, wrappings for fruit and vegetables. And, really, there is no reason for it to exist. If you go to the grocery store, for any given vegetable, you can probably buy it pre-packaged in plastic, or loose with no packaging. But buying it loose costs a lot more. Why?
Take bottled water. There is absolutely no reason to take ordinary water, put in in plastic bottles, and drive it around. Mineral water costs maybe 500x as much as tap water, and generates insane numbers of plastic bottles. WTF? Even if you want bubbles in your water, just buy one of the gadgets that fizzes your tap water - problem solved. Sure, those are PET bottles, and they're supposed to be recycled. Wanna buy a bridge?
Around 1/3 of the waste they tracked in Malaysia was from. It used to be that you could buy large refill-sizes of products like shampoo, at least from certain manufacturers. I haven't seen those for years - it's all relatively small, single-use bottles.
Some countries dispose of single-use plastic better than others. Where the UK pays to ship it thousands of miles to become someone else's problem, I believe that the US buries most of it. A waste of land, and your descendants won't thank you for the treasures you're leaving behind, but it's better than shipping garbage somewhere else. Even better is the Swiss model, where anything not recycled is incinerated to generate electricity. Even better would be to simply eliminate the stuff.
I'm not a rabid eco-freak by any means, but single-use plastic is just stupid. It's a waste of resources, and it's a long-term, serious environmental problem. Ban it, or at least put such a huge tax on the stuff that it is only used where there is absolutely no other choice.
Re:This will never happen (Score:4, Interesting)
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We are not going to get forward thinking policies as long as the old status quo remains cheap and available. I'm not one of these green weenies that sees the end of the world every time a car starts, but single use plastics are one of the worse environmental disasters out there. An plastic in the environment isn't some hidden boogy man like climate change, any one can see the issues with just walking down the street any where. There are plastic bottles and other plastic shit every where.
Recycling isn'
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If you want it to change, the first thing you need to do is go back in time 30 years and stop the environmentalist movement and organizations from pushing through laws, regs and so forth banning paper and the smear campaigns that glass bottles were worse for the environment.
Thinking on my other post, I also forgot. In Ontario and Quebec milk in bags is the most common thing. If a leadership race for one of the largest political parties can be won or lost on milk tariffs and importing milk from the US. Wh
Re:This will never happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Something else we can blame on the hippies. I can get onboard with that. I'm good at blaming shit on hippies.
Banning plastic containers and bags, what will happen? We will switch back to paper and glass where we can. It really is that simple. We can push for bio degradable plastics where we can't switch. An switching from plastic to glass isn't some strange new thing we have to invent. We had a perfectly working system 30 years ago. We just have to bring it back and mix it with the current environmental movement.
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An yet are responsible for virtually every problem we have today. But this thread isn't about bashing hippies, we can circle around to that later.
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Paper is bad, and you're now talking about retooling entire production lines and the manufacturing of glass containers. You ready for this shit show? Cause here's what will happen: The closer it comes to being reality, the more companies will say "we need to do xyz thing and manufacture it." This will be followed by roughly 20 years of environmental impact studies, lawsuits, more impact studies, and the companies saying "fuck this" and farming it off to a country in the developing world that really doesn
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Paper isn't bad. Like glass it can be recycled over and over. Also like glass when disposed of in an environmentally unfriendly manner it will, eventually, degrade to a harmless state. Paper to mulch and glass to sand.
Plastics are not a natural product. They do not degrade into a manner that makes them harmless. They photo degrade, which means they turn into smaller and smaller plastics that will be around forever.
The big plastic bottles and jugs are not the problem. It is what they turn into th
Re:This will never happen (Score:4, Informative)
Of course paper is bad. Why do you think there were all those environmental groups protesting sustainable forestry 20, 30 and 40 years ago? Absolutely bad. I should have used /s in my original post. Glass is in general much easier to deal with that's quite true, unless it's related chemically to the corningware type of stuff(that includes all those cellphone touch screens too). In which case it's far more difficult to deal with, and even companies that deal in glass recycling generally bin it instead of mixing it back in to the general production remelts. It has to be treated differently usually powder grinding, which means it's more expensive to deal with.
Considering your microplastic sources are around 80-90% from the manufacture of synthetic fibers, and almost all of it in the water and air is coming from SE-Asia and China? Pretty sure we can see where the problems are happening. Note the big plumes in Africa where Chinese companies have started moving factories as well. The biggest source of microplastics in Canada is airborne contaminants from China. That is if you trust the federal government's own investigations to it.
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All politicians like to ban things they don't like. The particular type of politician simply determines what those things are.
Re:This will never happen (Score:5, Funny)
Progressive: Using the law to ban something old you don't like.
Banning stuff is what politicians do.
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Using law to ban things you don't like is about as authoritarian as one can get.
Fixed that for you. Let me give you an example. Recycling. At one end, you have public policy to "encourage" people to do so by making them feel good, with no punitive action. At the other end, you have a government body that checks and peeps to make sure you *are* doing it, and pushes monetary fines or jail time if you don't. Time for you to dust off your "values of coercion in public policy" and understand the difference.
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Oh, you buy a new car every day, and you trash your tv after each film you watch... ?!?
Those are not single-use items!
And medical equipment in the hospitals gets usually collected and recycled.
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And medical equipment in the hospitals gets usually collected and recycled.
You would think that restaurants could also collect the straws.
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Have you ever worked at a restaurant?
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Oh, you buy a new car every day, and you trash your tv after each film you watch... ?!?
That's the current definition they're pushing as a "single use" plastic. Go read their own draft.
And medical equipment in the hospitals gets usually collected and recycled.
Only metal items in hospitals get collected and recycled. Cardboard, IV lines, solution bags, needles, are all counted as a biohazard and disposed of. In some cases, they're shipped to countries that incinerate it instead.
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Think of it this way, the "policy" on single-use plastics, effectively means that massive swaths of medical equipment(everything from IV's to solution bags to non-pump antibiotics) would be banned under this genius idea. All immunization needless banned. All lancet and insulin pens banned. Then moving on from that disaster, we'd get into cars.
Think of it this way, only someone completely lacking in any sort of nuanced understanding of the problem of single use plastics would post something as ridiculous as your comment.
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Think of it this way, only someone completely lacking in any sort of nuanced understanding of the problem of single use plastics would post something as ridiculous as your comment.
Best go talk to Jr, and the Liberal government then. That *is* their definition. His entire government over the last 3.5ish years has been overreach followed by public outcry followed by 'well maybe we won't do it...'
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"Think of it this way, the "policy" on single-use plastics, effectively means that massive swaths of medical equipment(everything from IV's to solution bags to non-pump antibiotics) would be banned under this genius idea. All immunization needless banned. All lancet and insulin pens banned. Then moving on from that disaster, we'd get into cars. Everything from your dashboard to the container holding you washer fluid would be banned. TV's, monitors, keyboards, mice. I'd be okay with pop bottles going back to
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Not a fan of single use plastic ban here but this sounds like scare mongering. I seriously doubt healthcare will be effected by this in the end.
Considering I'm using Jr's own draft document and claims, take it for what it stands for. That's what they made the announcement on. Outlier pushes like this are often done in order to gauge public response and how big of a backlash there is. Which should also give you an indication of the "internal policy" that they believe.
To give you another example, back in 2013? 2014? Somewhere around there, someone leaked internal documents from the Liberal Party of Ontario, who wanted to ban all natural gas distri
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This distance between a bill proposed and a bill passed is miles on miles. Stuff like this pops up as potential problems when bills are first proposed all of the time. There's no way medical waste will be included in the final draft.
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As soon as I saw you misrepresenting the carbon tax, I knew you were full of shit.
You should go talk to people in BC then. I'm sure the that the $1.80L for gas that some people are paying isn't hurting them at all. Or that you find out that half the NG cost is hidden because you're being triple billed on the carbon tax, for variable rate billing, the distribution cost, the municipal taxes. Then after all that, you get hit for another $200 for the carbon tax that's openly displayed making your total bill just shy of $1k. Can't wait for you to go searching all those tens of thousands o
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I bet all those people being hurt by the high cost of gas will enjoy their tax return when they get their carbon tax credit though!
Re:What changed? (Score:4)
Biggest source not addressed (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe you are right about microplastics, but the largest source of plastic in the ocean is from busted fishing nets.
Re: Biggest source not addressed (Score:4)
At some point we are just a virus slowly killing mother earth. We keep creating new ways to pollute while being slow to recognize the impact. It might not be global warming the kills us, but our polluted food and water supply.
Earth finds a way. And Earth will find a way with plastics. There are some bacteria that can break down certain plastic bonds and more will evolve. For the first umpteen million years of woody plants nothing ate wood. Wood would not decompose. Think about that for a second- instead of "plastic pollution" the earth had "wood pollution".
The only way the earth got rid of wood is form fire- or it slowly became the coal that West Virginians and Yorkshire miners love today.
Could plastics in the ocean be our successor species form of oil? Probably not, but, I suspect at some point in the future we will artificially create an organism that can break down plastic, just like various animals can break down wood today. That organism will break down our plastic waste, and no doubt escape into the wild.... but I'm not Nostradamus, so I might be wrong.
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I suspect at some point in the future we will artificially create an organism that can break down plastic, just like various animals can break down wood today.
It already exists [sciencemag.org].
Re:Biggest source not addressed (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would better sewage treatment and washing machine design be a compromise? The fibres aren't really micro when they come out of the washing machine. Apparently 99% of them can be filtered out with a simple lint screen or washing bag.
The problem is really when those plastics go wandering around in the environment for a while and eventually break down into very small particles. THEN they're hard to get rid of.
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Canadians will have to return to wearing hides and furs if Justin Trudeau gets wind of this. PETA will freak out !
Then it will all have been worthwhile.
Re:What changed? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with democratic political systems, is people are not willing to act on a problem until it is in their face. The peoples general collective will is what will drive things.
This is good system for a lot of things, because it is really easy to get worked up by a lot of things that are not really a problem, and the test of time, will let cooler heads work things out... However for other things, it a problem of fixing a problem when it is is nearly out of hand.
Environmental Threats are extremely hard to govern. Most of them it isn't an immediate life or death problem, people get affected differently, and often these problems are a byproduct of something good.
If your water supply is polluted, and you get a 5% increased chance of getting Cancer from it, Being that people will get cancer from other reasons, this is hard to explain and fully quantify so the general public will want to do something about it. Often scare tactics are needed to exaggerate the problem to get action, only to cause a long term solution to fail, because people realized they have been lied too.
Re:What changed? (Score:5, Insightful)
>The peoples general collective will is what will drive things.
A nice theory, and perhaps Canada is one of the places where it's actually true to some extent.
There's two major counterpoints though:
1) the people's collective will is expressed only very indirectly through elections - if issues A,B,C, and D are most important to you, and candidate X is for A and against B, while candidate Y is for B and C, and neither have strong platforms on the other issues, who are you going to vote for? And what about issues E,F,G,H,I,J,K, etc. that you also care about, that aren't part of any candidates platform?
2) The collective will is for the most part easily manipulated and gamed by politicians and media personalities - e.g. few people cared strongly about abortion in the U.S. until the Republican party made it a part of their platform and spent a great deal of energy and money rabble-rousing about, until it became a make-or-break issue for a whole lot of voters, whose opinions on other matters could then be safely ignored.
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That's a problem with all political systems. At least with a democracy the majority can be swayed to a new point of view. If the king's advisors don't like you, you're probably out of luck. And dictators generally don't expect to live long enough to have to worry about the future.
Re:What changed? (Score:4, Interesting)
What changed was the sight of the garbage patch, and marine life dying with their stomachs full of plastic.
Unfortunately, Canada doing this will amount to mostly nothing, since most of the plastic waste in the world is created by China.
If we want to end plastic waste, then:
1. Fishing equipment must NOT be made of plastic, good luck with that since fishing line is plastic and is one of the earliest "smart" uses of plastic. That is the majority of plastic waste (fishing line, ropes, nets, lures, etc) in the ocean. It would amount to an end of fishing. No marine-economy system (eg most of asia) will let that go.
2. No plastic involved with food. Everything from straws/cultlery to pre-packaged foods, to fast food. Make it out of compostable paper. Straws are really a different issue entirely. Plastic cultery can in fact be washed, it just can't be industrial washed unlike metal. So just make all cutlery metal, and put a deposit on it so that it's returned if people don't want to reuse it. Straws unfortunately can't be reused no matter what material they are made of due to sanitization requirements, so they need to be made of recyclable plastic. Soda bottles, milk bottles, and such also need to return to glass.
3. Excessive packaging, (I'm sure you've all had to remove something like a memory stick or a pair of batteries from a 10" plastic frame before) is the easiest target and can be replaced with cardboard if it really needs to be that damn big. Plastic in packaging should be of the reusable variety, where opening it turns the packaging also into a holder for the item and can be replaced.
You all have to remember what changed in the 80's when we suddenly went from cardboard to plastic for lots of things for no reason other than plastic being cheap, and now we're paying for it.
I don't expect plastic toys to go back to metal and wood, but I do expect a lot of the cheap-and-rubbish tier toys (like the dollar store stuff) to stop being produced or be banned. A lot of stuff cited (eg plastic cultery, dishes, straws, Styrofoam (which was popular in the 80's)) is stuff you only find in the dollar store at present. I'm sure walmart or some other large department store occasionally sells these things to, but they're usually in the "party supplies" section and tend to only be available during Christmas, where as some grocery stores carry disposable stuff like this year round in the baking aisle.
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Straws unfortunately can't be reused no matter what material they are made of due to sanitization requirements, so they need to be made of recyclable plastic
Some restaurants have already switched to paper straws. They honestly work just as well.
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I clearly remember this being advertised in the supermarket: Paper=bad, Plastic= good, with pictures of smiling trees.
Re:What changed? (Score:4, Interesting)
I applaud this effort. But what changed?
China stopped accepting plastic for recycling and Malaysia is returning plastic waste to the countries of origin. When politicians run out of rugs to sweep problems under they finally have to deal with them.
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Odd. I've had a bunch of paper(ish)-based straws lately. Last week I remember looking at the straw that had been in a filled water glass for a couple of hours and thinking, it's amazing they can make something out of paper that does that.
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Most of those that can do a couple of hours are the worst of both worlds. Paper with plastic lining.
That means you can't recycle it with plastic or with paper. Just like pretty much all of the paper cups. Fairly typical outcome of the "image issue" that plastic straws and such have become, as in reality, plastic garbage that ends up in oceans is almost entirely sourced from the major rivers in Asia and Africa. Recycling and burning plastic garbage has been done for quite a while in Western world.
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> Do we have a choice here
Yes, we have a choice to not allow them or tax them.
I'm old. I remember as a kid that there were beer bottles everywhere, and you'd find discarded tires in parks and ditches.
Then they put a deposit on both, and anyone could collect it. And suddenly all the bottles and tires disappeared. A couple of months, poof.
So if you don't want these things in the ecosystem, just put a price on it. It's not rocket science. Its your choice to support this sort of thing with your votes.
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so what your saying is a company is making a non recyclable product and I have to pay taxes for it cause its not recycable. In other words, a company polutes and the people pay taxes... sure... make sense /sarcasm
Thats what they mean by "privatize the profits and socialize the costs"
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Re: and what about businesses ? (Score:2)
What?
When you buy a tire you pay a deposit.
Are you saying thatâ(TM)s bad?
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That's not really what he's saying. You put a tax on the product, which makes it more expensive. Effectively, it internalizes the external cost of the harm that product does. That evens the playing field for products that do less harm. As a consumer, the true costs are better reflected in the prices and you can make a more informed decision.
The alternative is a ban. In that case the government makes the decision for you.
Economic incentives tend to work better, if they can be enforced, and if the incentive i
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Yes, completely correct.
It makes a lot of sense, actually. YOU, the consumer, opted to buy said non-recyclable product. So YOU, the consumer, should pay the deposit.
When YOU, the consumer, are done with this product and return it to a facility that can recycle said product, they give you your deposit back. Or maybe you can't be bothered for your deposit, and somebody else takes it to the facility for you.
It's not that difficult to understand.
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I don't see anyone saying the people are the problem but obviously without this law you still won't be able to "Go in a convenience store, a store, any store, a mart, a grocery store especially and find food packages or other types of packages that are 100% recyclable or biodegradable" (or very few any way). You actually make the argument for a law like this when you say "businesses and corporation wont change unless they are laws and are ordered without any choice". How are the people going to choose to us
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I feel this is a way to say "the people are the problem" which I dont agree 1 bit at all. Yes people polute. That is true BUT...BUT... hear me out. Do we have a choice here ?
For some products, yes. You can go to a store with a bulk section, and put as many products as possible into reusable packaging. Have you tried to do that much, or are you just virtue signaling?
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