“Expensive scam”: Trudeau’s $8B plastics scheme includes 167 new recycling plants
Trudeau's plan to keep 90 percent of Canadian plastic out of landfills could cost the Canadian taxpayer over $8 billion.
It seems so long ago, when the world’s most deadly scourges (according to our so-called moral and intellectual superiors in academia and Laurentia) were climate change and plastics.
However, it wasn’t even a year ago when Justin Trudeau announced that his government would be banning single use plastics by 2021; He introduced us to his preferred beverage receptacle of choice to fight plastic pollution: the “drink box water bottle sort of thing”!
But the Liberals aren’t just banning single use plastics. They vowed to keep 90 percent of remaining plastic out of landfills and are going to list plastic as a Schedule One toxic substance, along with things like mercury, benzene and lead.
A list of deadly chemicals is a strange place to catalogue plastic, a completely inert substance that is saving lives from the coronavirus in hospitals all across the world right now in the form of syringes, IV bags, IV tubing and sterile packaging.
Several Canadian chain stores are also going back to using single use plastic grocery bags to prevent the spread of the infection.
We know the Liberal’s plastics ban is shortsighted and reckless. But now we also know it’s expensive.
Blacklock's published the numbers:
A federal target to halt landfilling of plastic garbage could cost up to $8.3 billion, says the Department of Environment. Staff said it would require construction of dozens of new recycling plants nationwide.
“Canadian governments and industry will need to make significant investments in new and expanded diversion infrastructure for plastic products and packaging to recover value from these materials at the end of their life,” the department said in a notice Economic Study Of Diversion Infrastructure Needs To Achieve Zero Plastic Waste In Canada. “This includes infrastructure for collection, sorting, cleaning and transporting plastic waste.”
Staff estimated that diverting ninety percent of plastic waste from landfills would require construction of 167 new recycling plants across the country “representing between $4.6 billion to $8.3 billion of investment”. The department is hiring consultants to conduct feasibility studies due January 30, 2021.
$8.3 billion is going to be snatched out of the already empty pockets of Canadians to meet the “drink box water bottle sort of thing” promise. Do we really think this recycling fiasco is going to stay on budget?
The City of Edmonton spent half a decade pouring $10 million into a private recycling company only for the thing to go broke in 2016. The city of Calgary was paying $300,000 per year to store plastic recycling until bureaucrats finally figured out what to do with the 1,600 metric tonnes held in 100 storage units.
Recycling is one of the most expensive scams ever perpetrated on municipal taxpayers. Now it’s going to be federally administered by those who think budgets balance themselves. What could possibly go wrong?
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