In June of 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a future ban on single-use plastics, as early as 2021.
It’s a good start…announcing the ban now will help Canadians start to reconsider what they are adding to the environment on a daily basis, and hopefully will lead to a change in attitude on our use of single use plastics, which end up in landfill, or, in our waterways and our natural environment.
A ban on straws, take out food containers, cutlery, plastic bags, and cups are just some of the items the government is now considering adding to the new list. Trudeau stated another item that we all know is one of the most over used, and the guiltiest polluter, the single use plastic bottle.
“We need to cover all of Canada with this decision and that’s why the federal government is moving forward on a science-based approach to establishing which harmful single-use plastics we will be eliminating as of 2021,” said Trudeau during a stop at the Gault Nature Reserve in Mont St-Hilaire, just outside Montreal, on Monday.*
Balloon sticks, drink stirrers, cotton swab sticks, and other single use plastics are being looked at, and manufacturers will be held accountable for production, and, recycling of these items as well, said Trudeau. He also detailed how 32 million plastic bags per year were thrown away, which can take up to 1000 years to decompose.
How bad is it?
A report completed by consulting firms Deloitte and ChemInfo Services was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada, with some alarming results.
The report came out with a statistic that in 2016, only ‘nine per cent of plastic waste was recycled in Canada and 87 per cent ended up in landfills.’**
**Read the Report: Economic Study of the Canadian Plastics Industry, Markets & Waste
What can we do to start taking action now?
We know, as water treatment specialists, that many people are already aware of the negative effect of plastics on our environment, and are making decisions to do their part to participate in the reduction, by switching to filtering and purifying their own water at home, and using an environmentally friendly and reuseable container to take their water each day.
One of our systems, the Kinetico K5 Drinking Water Station, can eliminate approximately 3.600 plastic water bottles from landfill each year. Cleaner than unregulated bottled water, and under the sink, the K5 allows homeowners to access clean drinking water, on demand. We will also recommend a whole home system, or, a specialty filtering solution, based on the results of a water analysis.
We can switch to recyclable or biodegradable items around the home and bring our own reusable containers when eating out. Is it inconvenient? Possibly so, but if we all want to do our part, a bit of inconvenience is a lesser issue than contributing to landfill. We have already been taking our own reusable bags to the grocery store, prefer to read our news online rather than have the newspaper delivered, or, think twice about what to put in the blue box, or, in the trash. We now recycle food waste, electronic waste, and have switched to more natural home cleaners.
Have you made any or all of these decisions in your daily routine? If so, adding more will not be a problem. Each action an individual takes to preserve nature for future generations is a worthwhile action.
Our motto for many years has been “My World Has No Bottles.” The Kinetico system not only saves plastics, it doesn’t run on electricity, and saves energy use, and money for our customers. Kinetico filters capture microscopic contaminants, bacteria, chemicals, sediments, and offers a more pure, pleasant drinking water, and home water use, for families each day.
We’re happy to support any initiatives that reduce single use plastics, at Performance Water Systems. Read through our website and ask us about which one might be right for your particular water challenges.
Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/plastics-ban-trudeau-mckenna-1.5168828
