Petition for Control of Single Use Plastic

This week’s post is about that scourge, single use plastic, and easy actions everyone can and should take.

Of course, no thinking person uses single use plastic willingly! But it’s hard to avoid. There are many easy ways to lessen the problem of litter caused by disposables. I outline three in the three paragraphs below.

I used to ride my bike to work. When the bottle (there were few cans then) deposit was 2 cents there were lots of bottles on the bike path. Since the next stage was some vandal breaking them and the broken glass causing bike tire flats, I picked them up; each way, every trip, I got up to a full wire bicycle basket of returnable bottles – 10 or 12 bottles. When the deposit went up to 10 cents – no more bottles, not even one. People took them back, or scavengers got them. Either way, perfect!

Another experience is that neighbouring Quebec started to charge a deposit of 5 cents on aluminium cans, and, I understand, gets 95% of them back. In Ontario, on the other hand, I understand that Alcan (a big aluminium provider) partially subsidized the provincial recycle program, Ontario has no can deposit, and gets approximately 25% of its cans back. 70% less! Industry is the only winner.

A third experience deals with litter in Algonquin Park’s interior. Here, again, bottles (and cans) were everywhere; it was not unusual for me to leave a canoe trip with dozens of bottles, picked up on the way out, rattling around in the bottom of my canoe. Here the solution was an outright ban on both cans and bottles, and checking occurred at the entry points for a few years. In one season it went from litter everywhere to only an occasional bread tie, or a valued but lost item.

So, my experience suggests that:

1. an appropriate deposit gets litter back

2. keep industry out of it

3. outright bans work, at least where there is a gate and they can be enforced

Each point above suggests many ideas about controlling litter. What’s absent, in my opinion, is political will. This week’s post points one to a Canadian Wildlife Federation sponsored petition, designed to create and shore up flagging federal political will. Go do it! While you’re there, sign up for CWF bulletins if you wish. (CWF is a very worthy organization working on conservation in Canada.)

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