Time to toughen up measures against single-use plastics in Edmonton, councillor says

Edmonton is lagging behind Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal in the campaign toreduce single-use plastic straws, bags, cups and take-out containers, waste reduction advocates say.

One city councillor wants to change that.

Coun. Ben Henderson plans to put forward a motion at the city's utility committee Friday asking city staff to study measures in other jurisdictionsto cut back on single-use plastics.

"Certainly there are other provinces and other cities that are way ahead of us on this," Henderson told CBC News Monday.

The discussion goes back to 2008, he said, when the city talked aboutgetting people to cut back on using plastic bags.

"We're sort of stalled on it," Henderson said.

The advocacy group, Waste Less Edmonton, is cheering on Henderson in his renewed push to get the city involved.

Melissa Gorrie, a co-founder of Waste Free Edmonton, agrees Edmonton can look to other jurisdictions that have done a lot of researchand enacted laws on plastic reduction.

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"We don't need to reinvent the wheel here, we don't need to start from scratch,"Gorriesaid.

Events like The Last Straw Campaign, a July 14 competition between Calgary and Edmonton to reduce the use of plastic straws,require them to reach out to businesses on an individual basis, she said.

"What we'd really like to see is the city take the lead and implement kind of an umbrella initiative where it touches on all businesses at once."

The group is pushing the city to create bylaws that regulate single-use plastics, which would includes measures like a ban or a surcharge.

"Different products might need a different approach," she said.

Instead of charging the typical 5 cents for a plastic bag, she said, the city could insist on a surcharge of 10 or 15 cents.

"The higher the price, the bigger the impact on behaviour."

Nationalaction

Henderson's initiative comes on the same week environmental and civic groups endorsedseveral national policies under the "Towards a Zero Plastic Waste Canada" declaration.

Thirty-three groups recommend Canada require all provinces to attempt recyclingat least 85 per cent of single-use plastics by 2025.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities passed a resolution on climate change at their annual conference in Halifax last weekend.

The resolution calls on municipalities to back necessary actions so Canada can cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

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Single-use plastics are part of the larger climate change issue, Gorrie noted.

"It's a huge impact, it's a lot of non-renewable resources that are going into that," she said of plastic production. "Shipping, disposing of these products that we use for mere seconds to minutes."

Henderson said the impact of plastics may be more noticeable in Maritime provinces wheregarbage ends up in the ocean. Microplastics are polluting water streams in all provinces, he added.

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