Canada Tackling the Plastic Bag Issue

It’s another slow news day on the reusable bag front, but, at the very least, Canada is trying to get things done and make some headway on the subject. Sort of. At any rate, four major retail associations in the country have banded together to endorse a plan for significantly reducing the amount of plastic bags distributed in British Columbia over the next five years.

The program includes commitments to a goal to reduce the use of plastic
bags by 50 per cent in five years; consumer education initiatives to promote
the use of reusable shopping bags; appropriate and meaningful incentives to
encourage consumers to reduce plastic bag demand; and the provision of
collection points for single-use plastic bags to be recycled where possible.
It also includes annual monitoring and reporting to ensure progress is made.

“With an estimated 1.5 billion plastic bags distributed in B.C. each
year, retailers are going to need help from our customers to meet this
target,” said Max Logan, B.C. Director, RCC. “Retailers can provide the
alternatives, but ultimately its up to customers make the best choices.”

The partners will work jointly to implement a practical, province-wide
‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ solution for plastic bags distributed in retail
stores. This will ensure that British Columbians in all regions will enjoy
similar benefits through this industry-led plastic bag stewardship program.
“Independent grocers are an integral part of B.C. communities and that’s
why we are participating in this co-operative initiative,” said John Scott,
President and CEO, CFIG “It will see less litter on neighbourhood streets and
we look forward to working with all retailers, governments and consumers to
make this happen.”

Well, okay. You all know how I feel about “proactive approaches” by now. (And if you don’t, in a nutshell it’s mostly that we have given people plenty of education and proactive chances to improve their ecological habits and it hasn’t worked, so it seems that negative reinforcement like a tariff is the most effective option.) But on the other hand any progress is still progress, as British Columbia’s Minister of Environment knows.

“The B.C. government applauds the retail sector of British Columbia for
taking a proactive approach to reducing the number of plastic bags that are
distributed each year in B.C,” said Barry Penner, B.C. Minister of
Environment. “Anything we can do to reduce the amount of garbage going into
our landfills is a step in the right direction.”

The article acknowledges that the success of this plan will rest on British Columbia’s residents and consumer population, so let’s hope you guys up north live up to your potential. Make your country proud!

Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.