Canada only responsible for 0.4% of plastic marine litter
A new report issued by the Library of Parliament states that “Canadian shores are not a major global source of marine plastic litter.”
The 2019 report, entitled Global Marine Plastic Pollution: Sources, Solutions And Canada’s Role was released yesterday.
Key passages from the report were noted by Blacklock's:
“Canadian shores are not a major global source of marine plastic litter... However Canada exports plastic waste for recycling to developing countries as it may not be economical to sort and process it domestically.”
“The current low price of oil and gas used to produce conventional new plastic resin means the economics often do not favour plastics recycling or the use of recycled resin,” said the report. “In a mixed recycling system such as a ‘blue box’ program, the need to sort multiple resins and the problem of residual contamination further decrease profitability of mechanical plastics recycling.”
Mostly composed of plastics, marine litter is defined by the United Nations' Environment Program as:
...items that have been made or used by people and deliberately discarded into the sea or rivers or on beaches; brought indirectly to the sea with rivers, sewage, storm water or winds; or accidentally lost, including material lost at sea in bad weather.
Trudeau's Liberal government is still on course to ban single-use plastics by 2021, fulfilling a promise made before the COVID-19 pandemic proved disposable plastic to be invaluable.
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