British Columbia officials have added a new provincial single-use plastic prevention regulation that they say builds on the federal plan to cut plastic pollution in Canada.
B.C.’s latest move is the creation of a Single-Use and Plastic Waste Prevention Regulation that covers many of the same single-use plastics targeted under the federal government’s Single-use Plastics Prohibition Regulations. These items include shopping bags, disposable food service accessories, oxo-degradable plastics, and food service packaging made of polystyrene foam, PVC, PVDC, compostable or biodegradable plastics.
B.C.’s regulation comes into force in December 2023, giving retailers and restaurants six months to use up existing inventory.
Under the federal plan, the manufacturing and importing of six plastic items were prohibited as of December 2022. These included plastic checkout bags, drinking straws, cutlery, stir sticks, ring carriers and food service ware made from plastics. Sales of these items will be banned as of December 20, 2023, the same timeline as B.C.’s own plan.
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B.C. has been charting its own path on the pollution front since it launched the CleanBC Action Plan in 2019. Since then, 21 municipalities have established bylaws to limit single-use plastics in their communities.
“Focusing on hard-to-recycle single-use and plastic items will help move B.C. to a circular economy where waste and pollution are eliminated, products and materials are kept in the economy through re-use, and natural systems are regenerated,” B.C.’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, George Heyman, announced in a statement.
Additionally, B.C. plans to fully ban the use of polystyrene food trays in July 2030.
The province has invested nearly $40 million in the CleanBC Plastics Action Fund, which supports B.C.-based innovators to reduce plastic waste, reuse items and include more recycled material in the manufacturing of products.
In 2019, Canadians threw away 4.4 million tonnes of plastic waste, only 9% of which was recycled, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Last week, the federal government announced its intention to develop a Pollution Prevention Planning Notice (P2 Notice) for plastic packaging that comes into direct contact with food, also referred to as primary food plastic packaging. Consultation on the plan can be accessed here.
