Juno News - July 21, 2024


B.C. bans plastic and styrofoam takeout containers


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

182.32881

Word Count

1,926

Sentence Count

139


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 In British Columbia, a furthering of what's become the norm now in politics, which is the
00:00:14.100 war on plastic. Now, I spoke about this a few weeks back on this show, and we talked about
00:00:18.860 why the government was just so scientifically wrong to view plastic as a toxin, but that is
00:00:24.360 effectively what it's committed to doing at the federal level. The Supreme Court will ultimately
00:00:28.860 get to weigh in on whether the government's plastics ban is appropriate, but British Columbia
00:00:34.120 has decided to go out on its own here and ban plastic and styrofoam takeout containers.
00:00:40.640 So if you want to go and pick up whatever you like from takeout in British Columbia, you
00:00:45.800 want to go and get something from the Cactus Club, they cannot give it to you in a styrofoam
00:00:50.940 or plastic container. So what does that leave you? What does that leave you? It'll leave
00:00:55.460 you paper, I guess. So if you order paper, you're going to hopefully not have soup that
00:01:00.460 will just melt through it before you get home. There are some very expensive alternatives
00:01:04.380 that have come out that are made through biodegradable materials. But even then, we're talking about
00:01:08.920 a war on plastics here. And what do people do with a lot of these containers? They reuse
00:01:13.560 them, but that's no longer allowed. Joining me on the line now is our good friend, Catherine
00:01:19.980 Swift. Catherine, good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on today. Nice to see you
00:01:24.020 as always, Andrew. So we've talked on the show in the past. Actually, you and I have spoken
00:01:28.720 about it, about why they're just so profoundly wrong, these mandates. But there is a huge
00:01:34.180 cost aspect to this as well, because the plastic alternatives are either ineffective when you
00:01:39.520 look at paper-based products, or they're incredibly expensive, like some of these more
00:01:44.220 environmentally friendly ones. And for small businesses, especially in the food service
00:01:48.220 industry, this is not insignificant. Oh, and it's also, excuse me, it's also inflationary,
00:01:54.920 obviously, because the, when the, you know, the margins in some of these, in fact, most of these
00:02:00.220 businesses are incredibly slim. They can't absorb a big increase in the cost of containers. So that gets
00:02:05.740 passed on to the consumer. So it's also an inflationary policy. And what gets me is that if you
00:02:11.080 actually look at the, these alternatives, they're often worse for the environment than the plastics
00:02:16.100 are. There is a good solution here. The plastics industry in Canada has actually been very innovative
00:02:21.600 and productive in putting forward solutions. For starters, we have a lot more, I guess,
00:02:27.360 calling it biodegradable plastics might sound like an oxymoron, but there are products that are
00:02:32.380 biodegradable and look very, some of them aren't really plastic, but they look a lot like plastic and
00:02:37.200 they perform the functions pretty much equally as well as plastic. And a lot of, as you say,
00:02:42.800 as well, the whole legal environment is up in the air right now. We had a federal court decide
00:02:48.480 Stephen Guibault and his plastics are toxic notion was not scientific. It had no basis in reality or
00:02:55.940 science or fact. And so they overturned that decision. So right now we're kind of in limbo.
00:03:01.480 Guibault has said he'll appeal it, but he hasn't done it yet. And as we know, the courts don't tend to
00:03:06.240 move very quickly in this country and we're likely to have an election at least in the next 14 months
00:03:10.420 or so, please let's have one. But so I really wonder, I guess BC is also coming up for an
00:03:17.940 election. And I was noticing in some of the background I read on this issue, they seem to
00:03:22.500 feel they have strong support out on the left coast there for the plastics ban. So I would suspect this
00:03:29.580 is purely politically motivated. They want to look like they're doing something before the election.
00:03:34.940 But again, when you actually look at the facts, definitely higher cost, definitely less
00:03:40.940 effective, because I've seen some of these paper containers and you get them home and they're like
00:03:46.020 mush, you know, and like you say, you hope you're not wearing your dinner instead of eating it.
00:03:49.980 But also when you actually do the research on them, they're actually often worse for the
00:03:55.680 environment. So a lot of this is tokenism, as you say, virtue signaling. And what worries me in
00:04:01.080 particular, and again, we'll have to dig into it a wee bit more, but what worries me in particular
00:04:05.680 about this BC's plans is apparently their next step is things like plastic film, like what you see a lot
00:04:13.320 of your food in and plastic containers like styrofoam and some other plastic versions that contain meat and
00:04:20.820 things like that. When you get into replacing these things, you're getting into unsanitary food
00:04:26.320 because these items are incredibly effective. They keep things clean. They keep our food clean
00:04:32.400 and fresh. They often are good for the environment because if you have stuff that stays fresh or
00:04:37.940 longer, you don't throw it out. You're not wasting anywhere near as much food. So I think that next
00:04:43.220 step could be even worse in a number of ways and even stupider, frankly, for the environment. So I think
00:04:49.500 we've got a lot of virtue signaling going on here. We've got also this unsettled legal environment where we
00:04:54.320 don't know, A, if it's going to be appealed. And if so, then this could change dramatically. So why
00:05:00.380 they're doing it now, I think it's all the upcoming BC election.
00:05:03.600 And interestingly enough, we've seen in other jurisdictions with various bans, such as Calgary,
00:05:09.680 that even environmentally friendly reusable alternatives are captured by the ban. There was
00:05:14.520 a case in Calgary where a store decided to have its own reusable bag and it was told, no, no, no,
00:05:19.940 because of the plastic bag ban, you can't do this. And in Cal and at BC, I was looking at this and it
00:05:24.900 sounds like their ban is even going to capture some compostable plastics and biodegradable
00:05:30.960 plastics. So they're doing the same thing, which is that even some products that have been made
00:05:34.040 specifically to avoid the purported issues with plastics are still being banned anyway.
00:05:39.660 Yeah. No, and this is what I was alluding to earlier. We have, we have a very innovative industry
00:05:44.300 in Canada. They're coming up with good stuff all the time that, that recycles. A lot of plastics are
00:05:49.800 almost infinitely recyclable as well. If we had some better recycling systems, we'd have much less
00:05:55.300 of an issue with plastics in general going into waste. And that's somebody's behavior. That's not
00:06:00.320 necessarily banning or whatever. That's people's behavior that has to change, but also to make it
00:06:05.480 easier for people by, you know, by making these processes of recycling and so on, a lot more
00:06:10.680 transparent, a lot more convenient and so on. But you're absolutely right. I know for me, my kids
00:06:17.020 laugh at me because I call myself the container queen. Whenever I see a container, I, oh, I love
00:06:22.720 that container. I'm going to keep it for, and I recycle them myself multiple, multiple, multiple
00:06:27.880 times until they virtually fall apart. And I know an awful lot of people that do the same thing.
00:06:32.620 So one of the innovativeness of the industry is not being acknowledged and accepted. And I know the
00:06:37.760 story of Matt Calgett was a food co-op. And they had these very innovative Canadian product
00:06:43.600 that could be used around the world, successfully have a great export industry. You know, there's
00:06:48.300 all kinds of pluses that could be made of this. And yet instead, the government chooses this,
00:06:52.960 you know, this, this dull weapon of bans instead of refining it, looking at positive solutions
00:07:00.460 and often, often making things worse. And that's the part that kills me. A lot of these alternatives
00:07:05.540 end up being worse and it squelches, you know, our industry is very important in Canada.
00:07:10.700 Our plastics industry, it employs a lot of people. It again, produces a lot of taxes for
00:07:15.520 government as all industries do and so on. So I think to have a lot more confidence in
00:07:20.280 them to produce some innovative products that help to solve the problem rather than these
00:07:24.800 bans that cost us all, are often worse and are not based in science.
00:07:30.460 I have to ask you, Catherine, you and your group notwithstanding, where is the industry
00:07:35.900 on this? And just as a bit of context, when this topic arose a while back, I tried to get
00:07:40.440 one of the, the head of the big plastics advocacy group in the country on the show. And originally
00:07:46.440 it was like, yeah, let's set it up. And then eventually, oh, we have to cancel and nothing
00:07:50.340 back. And I suspect they didn't want to talk to quote unquote, conservative media. And
00:07:54.420 I've had similar issues with some of the heads of oil and some of the major oil and gas companies.
00:07:59.060 And I have to wonder that because small and medium businesses, and certainly your organization
00:08:03.300 have been spoken up, but a lot of the big players in this seem to just be taking it.
00:08:07.880 Yeah, this is not uncommon though, Andrew, in all industries. It's not unique to plastics.
00:08:12.940 We find the big guys typically don't want to rock the boat. They want to go along to get along.
00:08:17.700 And that's foolish to my way of thinking, because they're basically betraying their members.
00:08:22.220 They're not sticking up for the truth and the facts in their industry. We have a number
00:08:26.480 of plastics manufacturers in our membership, and I've spoken extensively to them. I've learned
00:08:30.340 a lot more about plastics than I knew a couple of years ago. I'll tell you that much. And
00:08:34.620 they have a very simple kind of motto. And they say plastics belong in the economy, but
00:08:40.980 not in the environment. And that is when you get to more innovative solutions with better
00:08:45.860 products that degrade in a landfill or, you know, fulfill the environmental imperative a
00:08:51.940 lot better. But also the whole recycling thing. We don't recycle very well. And as I mentioned
00:08:57.580 earlier, plastics are eminently recyclable and often almost infinitely. So, and they're
00:09:03.260 so innovative. Again, it's plastics under the, you can't look around the room you're in right
00:09:08.620 now and not see a hundred things that have plastic in them. And it has revolutionized our
00:09:14.420 medical system. When are they going to start to say, we're going to replace something we're
00:09:18.460 going to put in your body, which plastics is the perfect answer for? Because again, it's
00:09:23.280 it's hygienic. It's, it's durable, low cost, you know, all that good stuff. Plastics have
00:09:29.560 been revolutionary and positive on balance for our economy. And of course, there's some negatives
00:09:34.240 as there is with anything, but we can do a lot better having practical solutions, not
00:09:38.360 these, you know, blunt instrument bands that do a lot more harm than good.
00:09:43.080 Catherine Swift, president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada.
00:09:48.780 I'm sorry, I missed your big flagship dinner a couple of weeks back. I was out of town,
00:09:52.820 but I heard it went well and always good to talk to you, Catherine.
00:09:55.660 You too, Andrew.
00:09:56.280 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North
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