Canada's plastic waste: issues and solutions

but we begin with a dispute over garbage a second country in Asia is now vowing to ship Canada's trash back Malaysia says containers full of low-grade plastics from this country are sitting in their largest port officials there opened these containers to international media today they are filled with plastic bags and household waste part of that trash was sent to Malaysia by a Canadian company which label them as recyclables Malaysian officials say the containers were shipped from at least 14 countries including the United States Japan France and the UK they say the unwanted waste was sent under the pretext of recycling Canada's foreign affairs minister said today she will speak with the Environment Minister about this situation but Malaysian officials are angry they're saying they're not a dumping ground and they're not going to get pushed around Malaysians like any other developing countries have a right to clean air clean water sustainable resources and clean environment to live in just like citizens of developed nation some of you may be surprised by what we're hearing tonight CBC News spoke with Canadians today to see what they think about this latest trash dispute here's what some told us it's not surprising like if he knows people are expecting that to see that it actually is you know if you're just taking all the blue bin contents and dump it into some container like you never know it's gonna show up it's not just Canada though if they're playing in Canada I think everybody is it's pretty wasteful in the world why are we sending our garbage somewhere else and we need to you know be stewards of that in our own country for too long countries like Canada and the US and European countries have been relying on sending our waste and recycling to other countries to deal with where labor costs are lower and really I think that's just not fair we should be dealing with a waste here and finding a way to recycle it so let's explore this further my guest wrote an op-ed in The Globe and Mail on the reality of Canada's recycling system and how it can be improved joining me now to break it all down for us veto points Sante he's the plastics program manager for environmental defense can welcome to you thanks for having me let's begin with what's happening in Malaysia I do believe that many Canadians will be surprised by what we just learned today in a country that is as modern and as wealthy as Canada is how is it that we are even able to send our plastic waste that's not contaminated that it is contaminated how are we able to send that away well you may be surprised but I'm not in the sense that Canada has been shipping its ways to overseas for a really long time about 30 percent of Canadian waste gets shipped somewhere outside the outside the country of it's especially plastic waste and it's labeled sometimes for recycling but we never know does it really get recycled well do we have a sense of how much of it is actually contaminated well we know that a lot of it gets contaminated because like we used to ship most of our ways to China and not only Canada this is true for most developing countries and Canada stopped sorry China stopped accepting contaminated waste last year and since then we've been trying to find or waste managers have been trying to find other places where to dump this ways that is contaminated very difficult to recycle that's why countries like Malaysia are now picking up that slack since China says we're not taking it anymore so talk to us a little bit about the realities of recycling in this country and your op-ed you say it's broken well yeah I mean I say it's broken because first of all what we know is that Canada recycles only 9% of all its plastic waste that's a really low number if we think that recycle has been always sold to us as a solution to the overconsumption and to the over packaging of of the products that we buy buy every day so basically only one item of out of ten an average of what we put in our blue bin gets recycled that's pretty bad it means there's way too much plastic so you're saying 9% I'm the number I have seen most often was 11% so that's even worse and I gather a portion of that 9 or 11% is also contaminated so not even all of that number is being properly recycled yeah I mean contaminated really means just that it's the plastic is mixed with materials that don't don't make it recyclable or it means that there's like some food scraps or it's just dirty like imagine like our cardboard pizza they're coming and you know there's a bit of oil that makes the the cardboard not recycling anymore so that would be a contaminated material and I gather that even if a little bit of that contamination is in your blue box you've now contaminated the whole thing too so in your op ed you say that a circular economy is the solution and that's an expression I've I've read a lot today when I'm reading about how countries are grappling this well what does it mean yeah I mean a circular economy is the solution in the sense that we need to move from a linear economy a linear economy is an economy where we extract the resources make products and then we throw them away the idea of a circular economy is trying to keep those resources and those products as much as possible into into the system into into the market so it means reusing as much as possible trying to reduce as much as possible the use of resources and finally when we cannot reuse anymore recycle as much as possible but for that we need products that are actually recyclable we as consumers can do our bit with perhaps you know buying some of those reusable containers that are now more frequently available where you can go refill up go to a store and buy your own shampoo and put it in your recycle bowl kinetic container for example but you also argue it needs to happen with the companies themselves what responsibilities should be on their shoulders yeah well now what happens is that the companies make the products they decide how to design them and they make a shiny packaging and they choose like all the mix of materials because like their concern is to sell it right they have no responsibility when it comes to what what happens when it becomes waste and so what I'm saying is that we're subsidizing US taxpayers we're paying the poor choices that this company makes when they make a product that it's not recyclable we're paying the cost of that of that disposal what I'm saying is that they should start to pay fully the cost of our recycling systems or change their ways change how they package why does a head of Boston Bibb need to be surrounded in a plastic clamshell exactly like they need to get creative once they get responsible and they would they should be responsible also for collecting and recovering the materials I'm sure that we'll get creative and they will find ways to make products more recyclable and to make sure that these they don't get dumped and they get actually recycled I guess it's up to the consumer to demand that as well but also with the pressure from countries like Malaysia that we're seeing today if these companies don't adopt some changes if the consumers don't adopt some changes soon what do you expect will happen well I expect that we'll be drawing in plastic you know we know that by 2050 the the quantity of plastics being produced will double we know now that these countries are not accepting our plastic waste and it means that this plastic waste will stay here so if no changes are adopted both from you know federal and provincial governments those that are responsible of taking decisions and the companies being really responsible and changed their ways we will be literally drowning in plastic that's a dire prediction I appreciate your insights and your expertise on this thank you thank you very much for having me Vito bonne santé is the plastics Programme Manager for Environmental Defense Canada so what role do corporations play in this issue what do companies need to do to ensure their products are more sustainable joining me more up for more on this dirk matin he is the hewlett-packard chair in corporate social responsibility at the Schulich School of Business thanks for coming in thank you so first question to you do you Malaysia found in that waste as we just heard plastic bags from Canadian grocery stores so how big of a role do the corporation's themselves play here I think the corporation's initially produce waste they produce the passive packaging which then you know ends up in the waste so there is a corporate role but there's also a role for the computer consumer of course you know who throw that away but I think overall it is more policy question what do we do with recycling in this country Canada in the g20 countries is not even on the top 20 list of recycling we have a dismal recycling system and thank you for inviting me as a business school professor from Canada's top business school in Toronto here the Schulich school for 25 years we have a program now to marry saving the environment and doing successful business in recycling and doing this intelligently there are so many opportunities but for some reason and these are mostly policy related reasons it has not happened and I would love to embark on this so policy from whom who makes those policies then mostly federal but also provincial government what do you do with the blue bin in which we do Depot's all our paper and waste and and and stuff like that who separates it where does it go do we really know is that transparency does the municipal government have involved businesses in other countries in the world it's huge business I was working when I 20 years ago in another country someone in the industry told me waste recycling is the most profitable business next to cocaine dealing there are huge opportunities and unfortunately in this beautiful country we haven't seen business jumping in honest so we're seeing a lot of our recyclables or as we just heard in David comments piece recyclables that are contaminated so they can't in fact do anything with them we're seeing this shipped we were sending them to China China has now said no more thank you very much and that's now why we're seeing countries like Malaysia taking it on you say there's actually a business opportunity here do you envision a future where Canada doesn't have to send our trash overseas that could be one thing there are very high-value opportunities of recycling and turning this type of trash into products which could be set sold profitably the other option of course would be since recycling separating waste takes in a lot of manual labor to do this in countries like the Philippines and Malaysia but then Canadian companies can just sign a contract and ship it away and forget about it but have to monitor what is going on on the ground if you separate you clean and you work up the waste in a way that it can be transformed into new products there is a huge business opportunities for these countries and the problem with Canadian companies is that they ship it away sign some contracts too often almost I would allege corrupt businesses at the other end and think we are fine we do you know there is some illegal recycling happening in some of those countries as you allude to so question then should the focus be not so much even on recycling but on reducing it is one of the ours we used to talk about that would be the Holy Grail of course and I think we are still way ahead of doing these things you know there are efforts and you have to give credit to Canada to been water single-use water bottles from you know on my campus where I work they are banned you know and a lot of other companies and Kennedy's cannot I have done this but at the end of the day these are part of life packaging in an economy which is organized as we have organized it we need to create the recycling industry it can be a profitable industry that has been my message for 25 years you can do well for the planet and to do well business that's the challenge we really have to embrace it sounds ideal and I appreciate you coming in with your insights today thank you thank you for having me thank you dirk matin and he's the hewlett-packard chair in corporate social responsibility at the Schulich School of Business one of the best in the country thanks for your time

Channel: CBC News

Views: 137,695

Keywords: Malaysia, Recycling, Canada, Trash, Plastics, Waste, Environment, Sustainability., plastic waste, containers, Canadian government, government, solutions, issues, trash, garbage, Asia, CBC News, CBC News Network

Id: -wFwsDWIrPk

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2019