Calgary businesses and Alberta politicians are pressuring the federal government to exempt compostable checkout bags from its single-use plastic sales ban, which takes effect in December.
The Calgary Co-op is petitioning Ottawa to allow the use of the bags. The store’s director of communications, Sage Pullen McIntosh, said they replaced all their plastic bags with an alternative that has a silky feel.
“Immediately, our members said how much they loved them,” Pullen McIntosh told CBC. “And they also serve double duty.”
The co-op and the bag supplier — working with the city of Calgary — developed a bag that will break down in the city’s compost facility in about a month.
The store assumed, because the bags contain no plastics, that Ottawa would permit the bag as it phased out single-use plastic bags — a ban the store supports.
The bags weren’t exempted, which “shocked” Pullen McIntosh. The store launched a public petition to get Ottawa to reverse its decision.
“We’re just hoping to get enough attention. Enough interest so that we can have more conversations at the federal level,” Pullen McIntosh said. “Because we do feel that these bags are worth fighting for.”
Both Calgary’s mayor and the Alberta government support the store.
“If (Ottawa wants) to do a blanket approach that doesn’t work for everybody, we’ve got that right now,” said Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
“We want to make sure federal legislation isn’t inadvertently hampering or hindering innovation in that space,” said Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz.
Those regulations are part of the department’s plan to address pollution and prevent plastic waste.
The department said 15 billion single-use plastic checkout bags were sold in Canada in 2019.
In a statement, the federal environment minister’s press secretary, Kaitlin Power, said compostable checkout bags could end up in the wild.
“And when these bags become litter, they pose a threat to wildlife and the environment just like conventional plastic checkout bags,” Power said.
She added North America doesn’t have any accredited standards that “ensure the biodegradation of a plastic item in the Canadian environment within an acceptable time frame and without causing harm to the environment.”
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was more emphatic when CBC asked him about exempting Leaf products.
“We won’t change the regulation for one company. It makes absolutely no sense. We would prevent the ability to tackle the most common form of plastic pollution,” Guilbeault said.
“That’s really unacceptable.”
Fiesta Farms, an independent family-run store in Toronto, also sells the bags for 10 cents.
“To me, [the regulation] doesn’t make sense. You can sell a compostable bag on the shelf, but you can’t have it at the checkout,” said Kendra Sozinho, the assistant store manager.
An environmental group warns about the increasing number of plastic alternative items appearing on the market, some of which don’t break down, becoming micro-plastics.
Karen Wirsig, the senior program manager with Environmental Defence, worries about what would happen if compostable bags and containers were diverted to the green bin system.
“Imagine if we just replaced all that with so-called compostables. It would overflow all our organics programs, and we wouldn’t have any room for actual organics,” Wirsig said. “In the end, we would not have healthy, good soil amendment.”
Karen Wirsig, the senior program manager for plastics with Environmental Defence, holds up her reusable shopping bag. (Karen Wirsig/ Submitted)
‘Not all compostable plastics are created equal’
Leaf Environmental Products makes the Calgary grocer’s compostable bags. The company’s founder, Jerry Gao, said the bags are made of polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT). Both are widely described as compostable resins under certain conditions.
Gao said his bags do not contain polyethylene, a chemical compound typically found in plastics.
“We were quite shocked at the decision to lump them into a category called non-conventional plastics as there is no plastic in the product,” Gao said. “I do hope they start listening and start looking at the science.”
Leaf Environmental Products makes the Calgary grocer’s compostable bags. The company’s founder, Jerry Gao, said the bags are made of polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT). (Jerry Gao/ Submitted)
A York University researcher who studies recycling and waste systems says some compostable alternatives are not worth the hype.
“Not all compostable plastics are created equal,” said Calvin Lakhan, a research scientist at York University’s Faculty of Environment and Urban Change and co-investigator of the university’s research project “the Waste Wiki.”
However, in most cases, the ones that meet the international benchmark from the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) will break down in many municipal compost facilities.
Leaf’s bag, Gao said, meets the BPI standard.
Lakhan says that the general public needs help to distinguish between a compostable item and a regular plastic one.
And many municipal composting facilities, he said, like the city of Ottawa, divert compostable items to landfills where they produce methane, a more potent greenhouse gas.
If discarded in the wild, BPI-approved items, he said, do tend to break down, but at a slower rate than in a compost facility, which can pose a risk to wildlife.
“If a sea turtle eats a compostable bag or an ethylene bag, I am pretty sure a sea turtle is in bad shape either way,” Lakhan said.
Lakhan agrees compostable bags and items are not a “turnkey” solution for tackling plastic waste, but they could be a step toward getting there.
“I think that it is something that we should explore, something that we should embrace and be exempt at this current juncture,” he added.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
