Fraser Institute- Science exposes Ottawa’s ill-founded war on plastics
by the government’s own accounting, regulating plastic waste into extinction by 2030 is a quixotic endeavour that will cost more than it will deliver in benefits to the environment, health or safety. In fact, it will perversely lead to a significant increase in waste production consisting of the substitute materials Canadians will employ in lieu of SUPs. And other studies also show that alternatives to SUPs have worse impacts on the environment—they create more conventional air and water pollutants, they lead to the generation of more greenhouse gases, they consume more energy over their lifecycles and they’ll likely increase the burden of disease facing the Canadian public.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the banning of plastic items is a sideways effort to ban fossil fuels and not an environmental cleanliness issue as portrayed. The conventional response when someone makes the demand to remove fossil fuels from everyday life is that they are ignorant to all the facets of production and products that are dependent on it. Plastics (which have inundated just about every manufactured non-consumable product line) are a major hurdle. So, the strategy is to remove them from the pool.
They tell us it’s based on some mysterious lump of plastic garbage floating in the ocean. Or, they relay worn out sob stories about some goose being strangled by a soda can holder. But, personally, I think those stories are just a ways to a means, and this is about fossil fuels and taking away the argument.
I completly agree with this. In North America, where does fossil fuel come from? Blue provinces and Red states. Its always been about punishing and demoralizing political enemies.
Canada has blue provinces?
So, PM Blackface is solving Canada’s ecological problems
in exactly the same way he’s solving gun crime?
*
the unfindable “great pacific garbage patch” which like the state it’s compared to, Texas, is not visible from space.
If only someone could locate it, then we could send an appropriate ship to clean it up
To paraphrase, a lie can circulate around the Pacific before truth can put it’s pants on. When the truth is discovered it finds that almost all the plastic waste comes from Asia.
I think those stories are just a ways to a means
90+% of the trash in the ocean comes from just ten rivers, all of which are in India and Asia. North America is a negligible contributor to ocean waste because we don’t dump our trash in rivers.
Thank you yes. Contra JD there is a garbage problem in the ocean and it should be addressed but this isn’t the way. People who litter should be subjected to Sharia punishment.
I see it as a way to micro-manage every aspect of our existence but, yes, the fossil fuel angle does make sense.
Do everything in increments so that the frogs aren’t aware of the boiling water.
I have a supply of plastic ones and I always keep some in my purse.
Right-o, Friendly.
Only elites like Trudeau and Guilbeault would use a plastic fork or spoon once. Most of us plebes wash them and keep them in the car or wherever.
And like everything else libs do, it is mere window dressing. Virtue Signaling. Optics.
Pretty much everything we buy now come solidly encased in multiple plastics. Processed food, auto parts…anything that is shipped or stored. Even paper straws. Pretty much everything except fresh produce comes wrapped in huuuuge amounts of plastic. But that is all being ignored, as we pretend to be “saving the planet” by banning a tiny fragment – an easy target for visuals only. (Kind of like closing certain businesses during the covid farce, while leaving other ones wide open.) Pick an easy target, and pick on that only, just to pretend to be doing something. Or be “seen” to be doing something to appease a certain crowd.
But all that other crap we buy that is totally triple-wrapped in plastic? It often comes from China, and we can’t impose any inconveniences on our overlords now, can we?
Don’t worry, Trudeau is using drink boxes full of water, that somehow have zero plastic content, and I’m sure are bought from an appropriately connected liberal vendor at inflated prices.
right on
Well … here in the Communist State of CA … I will soon be bagging my tomatoes in paper bags … just like they did in the 1920’s https://news.yahoo.com/california-law-bans-plastic-produce-134621266.html
How is it that the “progressives” keep moving us backward?
its always Progress to the glorious golden age of the 1920s
See also passenger trains
Passenger trains, streetcars and electric interurbans were plentiful in the twenties. Today a Minister of Environmental Propaganda can’t even train it across the country
Hmmm. Need to pack sturdy BC previously hoarded liquour bags for my seasonal home. Thanks for the tip!!
Way back in my youth, I was working at McDonald’s when they made the transition from polystyrene to paper packaging. I remember there were several university studies (the lead one from the University of Victoria, as I recall) saying basically, “No, don’t make the change!”
There was a laundry list of all of the disadvantages of using paper: non-recyclable wax, bleaching process, many more inputs. I still remember the numbers “35X the waste-water” and “17X the electricity” to do paper over the old styrofoam containers – which McDonald’s had already spent dozens of millions on to remove CFCs and try to make the envrionmentalists happy.
It was all for naught. The enviros just kept harping on the fact that polystyrene was “non-renewable” and therefore had to go.
I hear the echo of 1990 in this current load of BS.
Banning plastic straws is a way to make stupid people feel good about themselves.
And they don’t notice the stupidity of buying a box of garbage bags to replace the grocery bags that they used to use for garbage bags.
“…they’ll likely increase the burden of disease facing the Canadian public.”
Reducing the population. Part of the end game.
have to make space for the endless streams of new immigrants
We already have tons of space.
We went away from paper bags and straws some 20 years ago or so, to SAVE THE TREES.
So, tree destruction is now De Rigeur again? Deja Vu anybody?
Can EnviroMENTALists at least be consistent in what is permissible to sacrifice for Mama Gaia?
You are correct. I was born in the 50’s and we recycled much more than we do today. Straws were paper and coated in wax. Pop bottles went back to the store. All major appliances were repairable including radios and tv”s. Croceries were put in cardboard boxes and paper bags.
Well … they’re clear-cutting the BC forests to make “carbon neutral” wood pellets to burn. Good Gawwwd … what a WASTE of good timber.
When all my garbage when to the local landfill there wasn’t any problem with plastic straws.
Any engineer will tell you that there is no perfect process created by humans – not a single one. There is always a trade off, a decision as to which path to take depending on your client’s wishes. What engineering tries to do is be realistic – look at the facts and not just the feelings. Scientific fact doesn’t give a damn about your feelings.
100% on the byline.
Did anyone think to consult the people who extinguish vehicle fires before forcing them to be all electric?
Did they ban horse and buggies to make people buy cars?
Matters not a whit. The gov’t isn’t appealing to the smart people who crunch the numbers and those that are skeptical. They’re talking to Mr.and Mrs. Chucklehead and their 1.5 kids who are convinced the Blue Box recycling program is a total success.
Where does it go? They don’t care…they’ve done their part.
Doesn’t matter. What Trudeau says…goes and damn the science to anything else in his post national fantasy world.
Oregon decided that we can’t have plastic bags to carry our groceries.
Instead, they want us to use paper bags, or much thicker plastic bags.
The paper bags are as useless as they have always been. Especially in the rain. The thick plastic bags are stiff and horrible to use/carry and useless gor garbage, cat litter etc.
We also have to pay 5c (minimum) per bag. The thick plastic ones are usually more.
I visited the Uline website. a 1,000 count box of large, clear bags, just like the ones we used to have, but no ads and a bit bigger, work out to ~3c each. I always carry a few in my pocket when I go shopping. Gets some odd looks from people. Mostly jealousy as far as I can tell, as they struggle to fir everything into the re-usable bag they bought with them, the give up and buy more.
I’ve invested in a seacan of plastic straws. I figure at some point there is a descent cash value.
Trench coat, street corner outside the drive through;
“Hey brother you want a plastie-loosie?…shit, sorry I assumed your gender…you want the good tube? It’s flexy.”
It’s that or fentanyl and I just can’t be bothered to buy rubber gloves and a respirator.
The first step towards winning this ideological battle is to deny the use of the term “Single Use Plastic”, it allows the enemy to define the battlefield. Plastic bags and straws are used mutliple times in my household.
Every environment disaster is the result of a government policy.
But, but, why aren’t you concerned about the sea turtle who got a “straw” up the nose. How? I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was the eco-friendly stainless steel types; the type a child got up his palate after some heavy breaking of the car – fortunately removed by his father, a doctor. You can buy these at Canadian Tire.
Anyway, science! Here’s the environmentalist where I get some of mine from …
https://achemistinlangley.net/2021/06/13/debunking-the-claim-that-there-will-be-more-plastic-in-the-ocean-than-fish-by-2050/
https://achemistinlangley.net/2022/01/26/do-canadians-really-consume-the-equivalent-of-a-credit-card-worth-of-plastic-every-week-of-course-they-dont/
Careful though – you can spend a lot of time on his website. He is intelligent; It’s an well researched web site – especially about government research and BC pipelines.
Frankly, I don’t know why people and businesses don’t simply ignore stupid laws by the feds.
I never have had any single use plastic bags. Once used for groceries, they WERE all recycled for garbage and yucky stuff. I asked my friends and they also re-used.
Banning them has simply transferred the cost of garbage bags to my budget, from stores. City of Van gets woke points. I have hoarded former BC sturdy plastic liquour bags, so use them for shopping, IF I remember. Unlike the cloth “hippy bags”, they are washable with Lysol. Nothing in my small garbage ends up in the ocean except garburatored foods: the rest trucked to landfill, except re-cycle paper, compost stuff and containers.
What they should have banned in Vancouver is plastic water bottles, which are too cool to talk about, as hydrating and exercising is what is A PERFECT LIFE should be here. Our tap water is perfectly fine, so I think people who buy water are nutty. Those empty water bottles and fast food refuse is often thrown away on my property. Grown ups do not need straws for anything except milkshakes.
Paper bags for sale are even more useless, as they have no handles. I remember, as a helper kid, from the 1950’s when the bag would break, and you’d have to chase the food rolling down the driveway.
If they used linear low density plastic to make many of these plastic items, the damn things would last a life time, and could be washed and cleaned just like the metal stuff. Hell, a 2 mil bag made of linear low, can carry about 200 pounds.