'Wow, why didn't we do this 20 years ago?' Newmarket moves toward single-use plastics ban on town property

Industry leader and Newmarket company Eco Guardian president calls the move 'great'

Yorkregion.com
June 2, 2021

Newmarket’s Eco Guardian is an industry leader and one of Canada’s fastest-growing businesses.

The Leslie Street company started in 2004 producing reusable shopping bags and these days sells millions of compostable, eco-friendly food packaging products such as plates and cutlery.

President Anil Abrol is calling a move by Newmarket toward a ban on single-use plastics on municipal property beginning July 1 “great.”

“Slowly but surely, consumers are demanding replacement for single-use plastics. That is what is flaming the change (locally and nationally),” he said.

Abrol stressed it’s not a change that can happen overnight and will only occur if there is buy-in from residents and businesses, especially since compostable items cost 50 to 100 per cent more than single-use plastics.

While priority needs to be given to reducing plastics in packaging and reusing products, Abrol argues moving away from single-use plastics makes environmental sense, pointing out 89 per cent of plastics end up in landfills and also fill oceans and waterways.

Under Newmarket’s new policy, plastic cutlery, plastic straws, stir sticks, black plastic, and single-serve milk and cream containers used by staff at town facilities will be eliminated as of July 1.

The town will also stop providing the same products at municipal events, meaning gone are the days when the town handed out water bottles at Touch a Truck, Canada Day and other occasions.

Instead, the town has purchased a $40,000 water trailer for municipal events, where residents can fill up their (hopefully) reusable bottles.

The trailer carries about 1,000 litres, replacing up to 2,000 disposable water bottles each time it is used, public works director, Mark Agnoletto, said.

The town’s new policy also means snack bars in municipal facilities will no longer provide single-use plastics.

But the policy is not a total ban.

Contractual obligations mean single-use plastics will remain in vending machines for the time being, and residents will be allowed to bring disposable water bottles on to municipal property -- although the town is launching a public education campaign. People who rent town facilities will be able to use single-use plastics for now, but they will be encouraged to use eco-friendly alternatives such as products.

Although Newmarket’s policy comes only six months before the federal government’s planned ban of plastic grocery bags, straws, stir sticks, plastic cutlery, six-pack rings and food containers made from hard-to-recycle plastics, Mayor John Taylor and Coun. Grace Simon called the town’s new policy meaningful.

“If we expect more changes in our municipality for the environmental care, we need to continue to model it first,” said Simon, who introduced a motion before Ottawa announced its ban.

Newmarket is part of a global movement to ban single-use plastics, Taylor said.

“There is literally a floating sea of plastic in the ocean the size of France. I don’t know how anybody can hear that and say ‘no, that’s OK, let’s keep doing this (using single-use plastics),’” he said.

“What I think is what we will all find as a society is this transition out of single-use plastics will not be as difficult as we think or even difficult at all. It will be a rolling transition. I think we’ll look back in five years and go ‘Wow, why didn’t we do this 20 years ago?’”

However, on May 19, the plastics industry’s Responsible Plastic Use Coalition announced legal action against the federal government after Ottawa added all “plastic manufactured items” to the list of toxic substances of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

“This decision is not supported by available science and will have far-reaching and unintended consequences, including those beyond our borders,” the coalition said in a statement.

Non-profit environmental advocacy group Environmental Defence slammed the move.

“It is shocking that petrochemical and packaging companies are seeking to block the federal government’s crucial step to protect oceans, lakes, rivers and our health from plastic pollution,” plastics program manager, Karen Wirsig, said in a statement.