Accelerate reuse and refill markets

Governments and businesses need to collaborate to eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics while developing thriving systems for reusable and refillable products, including deposit-return schemes and new refillable product-delivery models (e.g., modern-day “milkmen” for consumer goods).

Plastic-curbing potential: 30%

Ramp up recycling markets

At least 80% of plastic is landfilled because it costs too much to recycle. Regulators will need to enforce design rules to make plastics more recyclable, and governments should end fossil fuel subsidies for virgin plastic and set mandates for at least 50% recycled content to help level the playing field.

Plastic-curbing potential: 20%

Spur on sustainable alternatives

In cases where reuse isn’t an option, UNEP suggests that corporations carefully replace problematic plastic products with alternative materials, such as recycled paper and certified compostable materials, but only if they’re backed by life-cycle assessments.

Plastic-curbing potential: 17%

Deal with durables

More than 30% of plastic waste comes from “durable plastic” products that last more than three years. To help keep demand for new plastic-based electronics and goods in check (and boost product durability), governments must enable the right to repair and crack down on planned obsolescence.

Stop microplastics at the source

Tiny microplastic particles account for more than 6% of plastic pollution. A ban on intentionally adding microplastics to products is key, but so is redesigning tires, washing machines, polyesters and other textiles so they shed less, preventing microplastic particles from reaching waterways.

Tackle existing plastic pollution

UNEP says that 22% of plastic waste is mismanaged in dump sites, burned in open pits or dumped in the ocean. To help put an end to this, the report calls for a global ban on exporting plastic waste to countries with low collection rates while also building more collection systems in those regions.

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The Together for Sustainable Packaging alliance – which includes McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Baskin Robbins – is pushing back against reuse regulations with marketing campaigns that suggest that the sweet simplicity of takeaway as we know it is at risk. Observers have been struck by the sheer scale of the lobbying effort on display in the European Parliament.  

Last November, the European Commission proposed new EU-wide rules to reduce packaging waste by 15% by 2040, compared to 2018 levels. If approved, revised legislation would ban single-use packaging for food and beverages consumed inside restaurants and cafés, single-use packaging for fruits and vegetables, and those mini shampoo bottles we take home from hotels. Other measures aim to make packaging entirely recyclable by 2030 and set mandatory minimums of recycled contents in new packaging. The proposed legislation also demands rigour when it comes to material labelled as biodegradable, requiring companies to specify how long the material will take to decompose, under which circumstances and in which environment.  

According to the European Commission, each person living in Europe produces, on average, roughly 180 kilograms of package waste per year. Without stricter action, legislators say, the region is on track to see its packaging waste jump another 19% by 2030. In the case of plastic alone, it could soar by 46%. Proponents say the new rules will slash water usage and greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to what Croatia generates every year.  

Environmental advocacy organizations have applauded the “strong aim” but pushed legislators to be “more ambitious.” They also warn against ploys to water down language.  

The current system works really well for them, because they get to keep using single-use packaging.

 

– Justine Maillot, Rethink Plastic alliance

 

Enter exhibit A: a multi-pronged campaign by the fast-food lobbying group calling out what a study it funded said would be a skyrocketing need for water and energy to wash reusable containers, along with a greater risk of cross-contamination in food-production lines. In March, McDonald’s, which generates more than one billion kilos of packaging every year, sponsored an article on the news website politico.eu that argued that reusable packaging will be “counterproductive” to the Green Deal goals Europe is trying to achieve. It’s not alone: industry lobbyists had more than 290 meetings on the topic with European Parliament members in early 2022 alone, according to DeSmog. 

None of this is a surprise to environmental advocates. “The current system works really well for them, because they get to keep using single-use packaging,” Justine Maillot, from the advocacy organization Rethink Plastic alliance, told DeSmog. “It’s still very profitable.” 

Efforts to combat packaging waste have been a long time coming. Zimbabwe banned plastic bottles and packaging back in 2010. The small Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda followed suit with single-use takeaway items in 2016. Parts of Europe have more recently entered the fray, with France now making it mandatory for fast-food restaurants to use reusable dishware and cutlery, and similar regulations will take effect in Britain later this year. In 2022, Canada announced its own phased-in prohibition on the manufacture, import and sale of six single-use plastic items, including plastic bags, straws and cutlery.  

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth note that it will take more than bans to change throwaway-culture attitudes. Governments need to actively pursue truly greener alternatives – a paper bag may not cut it, they note. Antigua and Barbuda, for example, invested in research for plastic alternatives and approved bagasse, a fibrous residue left from sugarcane processing, as a substitute material for packaging. In Vanuatu, bags and food containers made from palm leaves filled a gap after plastic bags were banned. “Working closely with the public like this can also encourage innovation,” the researchers noted.  

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Inside their postcard of a home, the family enjoyed a lifestyle not so different from ours in North Toronto. Except for one thing: nothing in that house was wasted. Once a month, a garbage truck trundled down the ribbon of road running through the valley and the four-member family contributed their monthly yield: one small shopping bag of trash.

An environmentalist at heart, my mother came home bursting with inspiration. Henceforth, we were going to shoehorn our North Toronto lifestyle into Black Forest standards of sustainability. But try as we might – recycling scraps of cellophane, crushing cardboard boxes, patching pants – it couldn’t be done. Not even close. Our weekly garbage bins – like those of our neighbours – remained full to overflowing, and when Toronto introduced recycling bins in 1988, they were too.

Cities are incredibly wasteful places. They generate mountains of garbage: discarded items of all kinds, many still containing most of their value. And then there’s the waste that results from poor policy and planning: roads clogged with single-driver SUVs, suburbanites commuting hours to work, the unhoused having to pitch tents in parks for lack of affordable housing. Wastes of time and space, of human potential and planetary health.

Among economists, there’s a growing consensus that the inherently wasteful linear model that has defined industrial production and economic growth for the last two centuries – of take, make, use and lose – is no longer tenable. In its stead, a circular model is being proposed, one that “uses less materials, for longer, again and again,” in the words of Joanne Gauci, a senior policy advisor to Metro Vancouver. In 2013, Metro Vancouver launched the National Zero Waste Council, which aims to promote circularity in Canadian cities by bringing municipal leaders together with representatives of government, business, academia and the non-profit sector.

It’s a global trend; Swiss-based sustainable building materials firm Holcim, which has developed a “Circular Cities Barometer,” counts Delhi, Lagos, Bogotá, Wuhan and Manila among the most circular cities in the world. Isolating the metrics on the Corporate Knights Sustainable Cities Index that reflect circularity – consumption-based emissions, water usage and waste generated – the cities that rise to the top include the likely Nordic candidates, but also Auckland (New Zealand), Arequipa (Peru) and Taichung (Taiwan). And while waste reduction is a higher priority in high-income countries – which account for 16% of the world’s population but 34% of its waste – the balance is set to shift.

The World Bank expects that as their populations and economies grow, low-income countries will assert waste dominance, tripling their current levels of production by 2050. By then, South and East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will likely be the world’s most prodigious waste-producers in absolute terms: a serious problem, as most disposal in these regions takes the form of open dumping.

Atinuke Chineme is tackling the challenge already. Having grown up in Nigeria, she is now working on a biowaste treatment project on the outskirts of the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, while pursuing a doctorate in environmental design at the University of Calgary. For this pilot project, members of a women’s collective gather organic waste from local markets and deposit it in purpose-built bins to be broken down by the famously voracious black soldier fly. The process is an odourless, contained alternative to open dumping that yields commercial by-products: the fly’s protein-rich larvae, which is used as animal feedstock, and rich soil for fertilizer.

“In the West, the focus is on the technological aspects of the circular economy. In the Global South, it’s more on the biological cycle,” says Chineme, who considers the circular economy an “internationally accepted term” for what she would otherwise call traditional practice. “It’s good for us to realize the value in what we already have. We’ve always known that waste can be used,” she says.

This perspective has long since been lost in high-income countries. Contrary to our righteous self-image as stewards of a vast natural landscape, Canadians are among the world’s most wasteful citizens, consuming more materials, water and energy per capita than almost any other country, according to a 2021 report by the Council of Canadian Academies. Canada tops the charts for waste per capita, followed by Bulgaria and the United States, and almost three-quarters (73%) of waste in Canada is incinerated or ends up in landfill, which in turn accounts for 24% of the country’s methane emissions.

It’s good for us to realize the value in what we already have. We’ve always known that waste can be used.

 

–Atinuke Chineme,University of Calgary

Stockholm, which ranks first on Corporate Knights’ index again in 2023, benefits from Sweden’s long embrace of circularity: from the country’s deposit system on bottles and cans, which dates from the 1980s, to the 2017 tax reform that favours second-hand purchases and repairs, to the 2018 creation of a national advisory group that integrates circularity into government policy. But the European city that has embraced circularity most ambitiously is Amsterdam, which, in 2020, resolved to halve its use of natural resources by 2030 and achieve complete circularity and climate neutrality by 2050. It is the first city to attempt to implement British economist Kate Raworth’s “doughnut” economic model: an aspirational schematic that constrains economic activity to the sweet spot between an ecological ceiling of natural limits (represented by the doughnut’s outer ring) and a social foundation of basic human needs and rights (the inner ring).

For some, models of doughnuts and circles are just old wine in new bottles, fancy riffs on the folk wisdom of doing more with less. But at the very least, the push toward a non-linear economic model is impelling cities to take stock. The City of Toronto, for instance, established a dedicated circular economy team within its Solid Waste Management Services division in 2018, one of the first municipalities in North America to do so. Three years later, it generated a baseline report that shows how materials flow through the city in three key sectors: waste management, food and construction.

Colourful diagrams illustrate where the city’s annual 2.1 million tonnes of waste come from, and where they end up. It’s instructive; the bulk (60%) of the city’s waste is generated by non-residential sources: institutions, businesses and industry, construction and demolition. Most of that waste is handled by private contractors looking for the cheapest disposal option, which is generally landfill. So, try as the city may to increase the portion of residential waste that it diverts from landfill and into recycling programs (currently 53%), the lion’s share of its waste problem will remain unresolved until it gets other levels of government and the private sector on board: “radical collaboration” is what Gauci says the circular economy demands.

Beyond the bold policies, lofty aspirations and savvy entrepreneurs, there has to be a fundamental shift in mentality

 

It also requires bold policy. San Francisco has paved the way in waste reduction with a steady stream of initiatives, beginning with a 2003 Zero Waste resolution to stop landfill dumping by 2020. In 2009, it passed a mandatory recycling and composting ordinance for all residences and businesses, the first of its kind in the U.S. It also set fees for garbage collection higher than those for recycling and composting and calibrated residential bin size to its priorities: recycling at 64 gallons, composting at 32, garbage at 16. Unlike most North American cities, which contract out waste management to multiple companies, San Francisco has an exclusive relationship with one, making it easier to align priorities. While San Francisco didn’t meet its 2020 target, it’s getting there, currently diverting more than 80% of its waste from landfill; New York City’s diversion rate, by comparison, is 17%.

Despite these kinds of gains, sustainability experts agree that of the three Rs, the emphasis must now be on the first two: reduce and reuse. The notion that recycling would be a waste panacea – allowing us to have our consumption cake and eat it too – has gone up in smoke. Metro Vancouver, with one of the most successful recycling programs in Canada, is diverting only 65% of the 450 kilograms that its citizens throw out annually, into recycling programs. And even when those programs work like well-oiled machines, as Recycle BC does, only a fraction of the recycled material (46%, in the case of recycled plastics) is being recovered in a usable form. The rest ends up in landfill: 976,230 tonnes of solid waste in 2021.

To some, “reduce” implies loss, economic contraction, fewer shiny new things. A 2021 report published by the National Zero Waste Council suggests otherwise, estimating that 20,000 jobs and $41 billion in revenue could be generated through 15 “interventions” such as mandating the minimum recycled content in plastic, insisting that buildings be designed for disassembly, and facilitating the repair and reuse of appliances and furniture. On top of that is the climate case: the 4.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and 4.9 million tonnes of waste that such measures would spare.

Gauci points to a growing number of Vancouver businesses that are thriving from the regenerative economy – like ChopValue, which converts used chopsticks into furniture and now has locations across seven countries, and Unbuilders, which dismantles and salvages the reusable elements of homes slated for demolition.

But beyond the bold policies, lofty aspirations and savvy entrepreneurs, there has to be a fundamental shift in mentality: from the Costco logic of buying more because it’s cheap, to buying less because what we have is dear. We can’t shop our way out of this problem. A wholesale switch to electric vehicles does nothing to address the problem of congestion, whereas more HOV lanes, ride-sharing apps and better public transit does. This is where cities can take the lead: modelling fairness and efficiency, encouraging less wasteful behaviour, making the most of what they have.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

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Even before the pandemic, 805 million takeout containers were dished out in Canada in 2019, as were 5.8 billion straws and 15.5 billion plastic grocery bags. Now Canada’s federal government is giving businesses until the end of 2023 to stop selling six hard-to-recycle single-use plastic items, including polystyrene and black plastic takeout containers, cutlery, grocery bags and straws. It’s an important first step that should eliminate more than 1.3 million tonnes of plastic waste, but environmental advocates point out a troubling fact: the ban is aimed at just roughly 5% of Canada’s swelling plastic stream. What about the rest of it? 

As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted in its latest global plastic report, released in June, “Plastic waste is projected to almost triple by 2060, with half of all plastic waste still being landfilled and less than a fifth recycled.”

“Less than a fifth” may be a generous estimate. In late April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a first-of-its-kind investigation into the recycling claims made by Big Oil. “For more than half a century,” Bonta said in a statement, “the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis.”

The reality, he added, is that the vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled. The bombshell investigation was announced on the heels of a damning report released by the U.S. Department of Energy a few days earlier, which concluded that only 5% of plastic has actually been getting a second life through recycling. That’s particularly bad news considering the United States generates more plastic waste than any other country. But the whole world is having a tough time figuring out what to do with its plastic.

For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis.

–California Attorney General Rob Bonta

Fortunately, there’s also been a surge in grassroots reuse-and-refill businesses around the globe. While the refillable mugs and reusable bags of the zero-waste movement were vilified in the early days of the pandemic, they’re back on the upswing. Independent start-ups like Suppli in Toronto and DeliverZero in New York have been tackling the takeout waste crisis by offering reusable container services to local restaurants. 

Now some major fast-food chains are promising to get in on the action. 

In a partnership with TerraCycle’s circular packaging service, Loop, refillable takeout containers may be coming to a Burger King near you. At least if you live in the United Kingdom or New Jersey, where BK outlets will be trialling deposit return systems for refillable burger “clamshell” packaging, soda cups and more. In Canada, BK’s parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), partnered with Loop and Tupperware Brands to pilot reusable food packaging containers for the Tim Hortons chain late last year.

RBI isn’t the only corporation scrambling to meet public commitments to shift to fully recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. Similar pledges have been made by more than 1,000 organizations. In May, Body Shop announced that it’s reviving plans to roll out refill stations across the U.S., and Dove is now offering deodorant in slick refillable containers. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola promised to make a quarter of its beverage containers “refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles” by 2030. 

Whether corporate efforts to introduce refillable containers go beyond novelty or pilot projects remains to be seen. On World Refill Day, June 16, more than 400 organizations released an open letter to the CEOs of five of the biggest consumer goods companies (Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever and Procter and Gamble), urging them to support “transparent, ambitious and accountable reuse and refill systems.” 

In Canada, dozens of environmental groups and zero-waste businesses are calling for increased government support for reuse-and-refill initiatives. Sarah King, Greenpeace Canada’s head of oceans and plastics campaign, says that the federal government has been “stalling on fully embracing refill and reuse funding.” 

King says, “Canada will only meet its zero plastic waste by 2030 goal if it acts now to cut production of all non-essential plastics and creates a strategy to scale reuse and refill infrastructure nation-wide to accelerate a transition to truly zero waste, low carbon systems.”

The OECD agrees that bans on a “tiny share” of plastic waste will get us only so far. Its earlier February report on plastic concluded that “bans and taxes on single-use plastics exist in more than 120 countries but are not doing enough to reduce overall pollution.” The OECD is calling for “greater use of instruments such as Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for packaging and durables, landfill taxes, deposit-refund and Pay-as-You-Throw systems.”

Bans and taxes on single-use plastics exist in more than 120 countries but are not doing enough to reduce overall pollution.

–OECD

While announcing Canada’s new plastic ban June 20, Environment and Climate Change Canada didn’t mention any of the above, but the ministry did note that “moving toward a more circular economy for plastics could reduce carbon emissions by 1.8 megatonnes annually, generate billions of dollars in revenue, and create approximately 42,000 jobs by 2030.” 

In a sea of despair over rising plastic pollution, some hopeful signs are floating to the top. As of July 1, India is banning a long list of single-use plastics, including plastic wrap, cutlery and plastic sticks. Austria is mandating that 25% of beverage bottles be refillable by 2025, while Chile is mandating a 30% quota. 

Back in California, ExxonMobil put out a statement denying the attorney general’s charges that it’s been misleading the public on the recyclability of plastics: “We are focused on solutions and meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is underway to enhance waste management and improve circularity.”

Of course, Exxon has also denied that it’s known about climate change for 40 years while spending millions on funding climate-change-denying think tanks. 

Judith Enck, president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics and a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, told Inside Climate News that California’s investigation is “very significant.”

“[It has] the potential to finally hold plastic producers accountable for the immense environmental damage caused by plastics.”

A version of this article appears in the summer issue of Corporate Knights magazine. 

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One disturbing consequence of the pandemic has been the mountains of single-use plastic it has generated.

In January, Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical unveiled a bold initiative to tackle this problem with plans for a US$1-billion plant in France that each year will turn up to 160,000 tonnes of plastic waste currently sent to landfills or incinerators into brand-new packaging and textile materials. Some of the world’s largest users of plastic containers, such as Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder and Danone, have signed up as suppliers.

The French plant – like a smaller one under construction in Tennessee – will use Eastman’s polyester renewal technology, which breaks down hard-to-recycle carpets, textiles and containers into their molecular building blocks, then reassembles the material into new plastics. The company claims that the process can be used repeatedly on the same materials with no loss of quality. It estimates that the combination of its technology and France’s renewable energy resources will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared with other recycling methods.

The company’s head of plastics, Scott Ballard, told a Tennessee TV station: “What we’re trying to do is make it easier … for governments to create infrastructure to recycle.

Because with this technology, that waste becomes valuable, [so] we can pay money for it as a feedstock, as opposed to them having to pay to dispose of it.”

Eastman’s project, which will benefit from French government incentives, is an encouraging sign that the fight against plastic pollution is gathering steam. Last November, a study for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that the pandemic has generated more than eight million tons of plastic waste, mostly from hospitals.

More than 70 prominent consumer-goods companies came together in January to call for a global treaty to fight plastic pollution. The signatories, including Unilever, Walmart, Ikea and Coca-Cola, urged governments to adopt a wide range of policies to “keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment, reduce virgin plastic production,” and decouple plastic-production fossil fuels.

Such initiatives are sure to face pushback from powerful fossil-fuel and chemical industries that supply the raw materials for plastics. They would be wise to recognize, however, that the tide is not moving their way. Projects like Eastman’s will hopefully persuade businesses in many other sectors that the future lies in ever more efficient recycling.

Zero: Keurig

Speaking of recycling… Coffee-machine maker Keurig boasts on its website that by using its K-Cycle program, corporate customers can fully recycle every one of its single-use coffee pods. By 2020, the Massachusetts-based pioneer of single-serve coffee makers had diverted 136 million pods, weighing more than 2.7 million kilograms, from landfills by composting the grounds and filters and recycling the plastic and aluminum packaging.

But there’s a snag for those of us who use Keurig pods at home. The company reached a settlement with Canada’s Competition Bureau in January over what the bureau described as “false or misleading” claims about the recyclability of K-Cup pods. Under the deal, Keurig agreed to pay a $3-million penalty, donate $800,000 to a charity focused on environmental causes, and cover the costs of the bureau’s investigation. It must also reword its claims about the pods’ recyclability, and change their packaging accordingly.

Within a few weeks of the settlement, Keurig Canada had put up a banner on its website, noting that “Keurig K-Cup pods may not be recyclable in your area; check with your local municipality for more information.” A link gave more details of the settlement.

Alerted by researchers at the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, the bureau found that Keurig pods are not widely accepted by municipal recycling programs outside British Columbia and Quebec. It also concluded that Keurig’s claims give the impression that coffee drinkers can prepare the pods for recycling simply by peeling off the lid and emptying out the grounds, when, in fact, some recycling programs require more steps.

“False or misleading claims by businesses to promote ‘greener’ products harm consumers who are unable to make informed purchasing decisions,” noted Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell. Such claims, he added, also hurt suppliers of rival products that are less environmentally damaging.

Of course, Keurig is not alone in promising more than it delivers. The University of Victoria group found that Toronto’s solid-waste department recovers about 90 tonnes of coffee pods annually from a variety of brands that clog its recycling system.

The Competition Bureau’s statement announcing the settlement ended on a note of appreciation for the company’s “voluntary cooperation in resolving this matter.” Even better, Keurig and other pod makers could avoid the problem by making only refillable pods.

The post Heroes and Zeros: Eastman Chemical vs. Keurig appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Simply put, the circular economy is a model in which waste and pollution are designed out of the system. The idea takes inspiration from the elegance of nature’s cycles and the wisdom of Indigenous worldviews. Put into action, every object we use is either refurbished, disassembled to be reused, recycled into a new high-value product, or composted. When virgin materials are needed, regenerative and sustainably managed resources are prioritized. Examples of the circular economy are now emerging everywhere: from major companies repairing electronics and individuals mending clothes to buildings designed for disassembly and materials’ reuse. 

While best known for their waste-curbing impacts, circular strategies could provide an invaluable solution by tackling the largely neglected 70% of global emissions connected to all the materials involved in our consumer society. 

A report released earlier this year by non-profit Circle Economy found that doubling the globe’s circularity could cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 39% from 2019 levels, limiting global warming to below 2°C. And, the benefits would go further: reductions in the consumption of virgin materials would help alleviate pollution, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. 

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has predicted that accelerating demand for finite natural resources will lead to future shortages, rising prices and supply chain interruptions. This could put $4.5 trillion of global economic growth at risk by 2030, according to global consultancy Accenture Strategy. Some governments have taken note. Fast-moving countries, led by the European Union members, China, and Japan, are positioning themselves to shield their citizens from these risks through comprehensive strategies and policy frameworks that support resource efficiency, new business models and supply chain collaborations. 

 Successful but isolated examples of the circular economy in our homes, communities and businesses now need to be scaled urgently, and expanded to our whole economic system.

Small business owners and large corporate leaders alike are also seeing a strong rationale for reducing waste. After all, there are greater greenhouse gas emissions associated with using predominantly virgin materials, and recycling or reusing those materials after the end of their first life reduces the amount businesses pay for landfill. Others see opportunity in new business models such as product-as-a-service. In these, customers pay for a membership-based service instead of actual products. Communauto, Evo and Modo are a few Canadian examples of companies that offer on-demand access to fleets of cars as an alternative to individual car ownership. In South Africa, Bushveld Energy leases the vanadium used in batteries and fully reclaims and reuses the mineral at the end of battery life. Every industry and sector now needs to consider its plan to compete in a world that demands longer-lived materials and products that are reusable, repairable, recyclable, re-manufacturable and regenerative. 

Examples of the circular economy in our homes, communities and businesses are, however, still isolated. They need to be scaled urgently and expanded to our whole economic system. 

This month’s World Circular Economy Forum, co-hosted by the Government of Canada, highlighted the rich universe of possibilities to deepen emission cuts under the Paris Agreement. It profiled a bounty of circular solutions for materials as diverse as plastics, minerals and metals, textiles, and food, across sectors as varied as construction, manufacturing, mobility and finance. It featured creativity from many, including multinationals, start-ups, social enterprises and community groups.

As the shift to a more circular economy gains traction worldwide, it’s past time for Canada, too, to develop a national circular economy strategy that should fully reinforce our climate goals. In a rapidly changing global context of intersecting crises, transitioning to a circular economy can boost prosperity and keep Canada competitive globally while dramatically lessening environmental impacts.

If we do this right, and learn from past mistakes, we can redesign the economy to serve all citizens rather than just the privileged few. While we didn’t collectively choose the inequities, economic uncertainty, and environmental issues that we face, the economic and social systems are ours to design.

Stephanie Cairns is the director of circular economy at Smart Prosperity Institute, and an established leader who has focused on environment, economy and fiscal policy research initiatives for 25 years.

Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and environmental communications leader who writes and speaks about the circular economy. She is the director of marketing and communications at Smart Prosperity Institute and The Natural Step Canada.

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Just when the movement against single-use plastic was picking up steam, COVID-19 scared us into consuming 250 to 300% more single-use plastic than we used pre-pandemic, according to estimates from the International Solid Waste Association. A good chunk of that has been tough to avoid: particularly the 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves now used globally every month. Of course, we’re also valiantly fulfilling our civic duty to stay home and binge-watch Netflix while ordering record levels of plastic-wrapped deliveries – which explains how Uber Eats revenue grew by 103% in the second quarter of this year and Amazon earnings surged by 40%. Not surprisingly, Ontario reported that residential waste was up the equivalent of “more than 600 full garbage trucks” for the period of March 9 to April 13 alone.

It’s no wonder that while the global lockdown sent oil profits plunging, some oil refiners are betting big on a more promising long-term market: petroleum-based plastics. As Oilprice.org recently noted, from India to China, “Asian oil producers have begun to double down on massive integrated refineries capable of converting more than a million barrels of oil per day into petrochemicals, the key building blocks of plastics.” With plastic set to become the largest driver of oil demand, the sector’s emissions could reach a whopping 1.34 gigatons per year by 2030 –that’s equivalent to the emissions released by more than 295 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants, according to the Center for International Environmental Law. 

Summer 2020 has also delivered a string of disheartening reports on some of the victims of our plastic habits. This week, the Associated Press reported that as Big Oil pivots to plastic, it’s also pressuring Africa to accept a flood of plastic waste. And according to research published last month in Nature, more than 10 times as much plastic debris is hidden beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean than we previously thought. That includes about 200 million tonnes of microplastic particles swirling around the frigid Atlantic. Also hot off the summer newswire: micro and nanoplastics are turning up in every human organ and tissue sample, as well as those of shark and seafood, tested. Did I mention that even without COVID, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean is on track to nearly triple from 2016 to 2040? 

Worse still, a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq concluded that even if governments around the world meet all their pre-pandemic commitments to ban plastic straws and bags and major corporations stick with their pledges to ensure that all their plastic is recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025, it will put only a 7% dent in all the plastic destined to pour into our seas by 2040. 

But honestly, there’s only so much doom-scrolling the average person can handle before we need some clear signs from business, government and civil society that plastic pollution solutions are at hand. 

So now what? Building back better by closing the loop on plastic

Thankfully, there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Incoming federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has signalled that her government plans to push ahead with a green economic recovery when Parliament reconvenes in September, joining the EU, South Korea, Chile and other nations that are pledging to build back more sustainably. 

To shift from our current reality, where Canada sends 87% of plastics to landfill every year (trashing $7.8 billion worth of plastics annually), to a thriving zero-waste economy, that green recovery package will need to tie stimulus spending to low-carbon, circular-economy goals. In Ontario, a coalition of 52 environmental groups has put forward a number of ideas the whole country should consider. They’re urging Ontario to start making recycling mandatory for industrial, institutional and commercial sectors (now responsible for 65% of all waste) and to ensure that all recycling costs are covered by packaging producers, not cash-strapped municipalities. The groups – including the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation and dozens of green non-profits – are also pushing for incentives for producers to design out waste as well as minimum-recycled-content targets. 

The Recycling Council of Ontario says that mandating strong minimum-recycled-content requirements will help revive Canada’s domestic recycling infrastructure. Plastic just so happens to be Canada’s fastest growing manufacturing sector – but much of that ($10 billion worth annually) is focused on making virgin plastic, according to a study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Rapidly falling oil prices have only made virgin plastic cheaper, which has been bad news for recycled plastic. To combat that imbalance, the EU is moving to slap a tax on non-recycled plastic packaging in the new year. A Corporate Knights white paper on building back better by greening industry suggests that the federal government can encourage new circular, zero-waste facilities with tax incentives, as well as clear regulations and procurement policies that support zero-waste businesses. 

An upcoming Oceana Canada report has more helpful advice for the feds, like banning all trade of virtually unrecyclable plastics to developing countries so we stop fuelling plastic pollution problems around the globe. 

If the feds want to build back better, advocates all seem to agree on one thing: Canada needs to move ahead with its commitment to ban unnecessary single-use plastic products by next year. In the early days of the pandemic, the plastic industry urged North American cities, states, provinces and grocery chains to put their plastic bag bans on pause, calling them “a public safety risk.” It’s since become clear that plastic lobbyists were wrong about a couple of things. Studies have found that COVID lives three times longer on plastic surfaces (including disposable bags and food wrappers) than paper. And, either way, scrubbing down our plastic-wrapped groceries with disinfectant wipes has turned out to be more misdirected anxiety than anything else, since COVID is largely an airborne virus. (More than 100 virologists, epidemiologists and doctors from 18 countries released a statement in June noting that “single-use plastic is not inherently safer than reusables.”)

But COVID-19 has made Canadians nervous. New polling from Dalhousie University found that while 79% of Canadians still want stronger regulations on plastic, many of us admit to buying more single-use plastic food packaging during the pandemic, and 52% feel regulations should wait until after COVID-19 is resolved. Nonetheless, jurisdictions from New York to Newfoundland and Labrador are now moving ahead with bans on single-use plastic bags that were paused during the pandemic. Some, like PEI and Sobeys, never suspended their bans – and neither should the rest of Canada. 

Combine those bans on problematic plastic with deeper systemic shifts to a fully circular economy and the Pew/Systemiq study suggests that the amount of plastic flowing into the oceans could be slashed by up to 80% over the next 20 years. That would be good news for the Great Lakes too, which are now flooded with 10,000 tonnes of plastic every year.

This time last year, hundreds of mayors, heads of state and CEOs around the world were tripping over each other to proclaim that they had seen and heard the public’s outcry against plastic pollution. Fast forward 12 months and there’s no denying that COVID-19 has set back the movement against single-use plastics, but the pandemic could, in the long run, be helpful – 

– if we take this breather to reflect, hit reset and build the future we want. That means Canada needs to ensure our economic recovery plans have green strings attached – fully reusable strings, of course. 

Back at Woodbine Beach, a couple of us pull out garbage bags and stop to pick up whatever litter we can, trying to stem the flow of trash washing into our waterways.  We’re heading back for another clean-up Sept. 20. It’s a small act, but if business and government pitch in to build a truly zero-waste economy that spits out less single-use straws, cups, forks and, yes, masks, we can start turning the tide. 

A version of this story appeared in the Toronto Star.

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But that’s starting to change.

In past years, for example, the aftermath of the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival has resembled a poorly managed garbage dump—thanks in no small part to an estimated 1.3 million single-use plastic bottles sold during the five-day event.

Yet 2019 will be different. When the festival comes around again in June, such bottles will be banned, according to a recent announcement. It’s part of a larger “greening” trend in the music industry, especially a push to ditch single-use plastics. And though that can’t solve the problem of plastic choking the world’s oceans—roughly half of which comes from abandoned fishing equipment—it has real benefits, experts say, including some unexpected ones.

Last year the U.S.-based Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, announced that it would be banning plastic straws from all 45 of its American concert venues. A number of other music festivals also banned straws, including Coachella and Montreal’s Osheaga. Sixty-one U.K. music festivals have banned the sale of glitter, because it’s made of tiny microplastic particles that end up contaminating watersheds downstream from shower drains.

And REVERB.org, a non-profit that works with some of North America’s biggest music tours to make them more environmentally friendly, has just launched a new partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme for a concerted anti-plastic campaign.

Among many other greening initiatives, which the group says have amounted to a 120,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions, Reverb has a longstanding program to ban single-use plastic bottles backstage among artists and crew. Through its #RockNRefill campaign, Reverb provides free filtered water and branded reusable bottles by donation. Now it will also be inviting concertgoers to sign on to some or all of the waste-reducing measures in the UN’s #CleanSeas pledge, such as giving up plastic straws, trading plastic bags for tote bags, and choosing reusable water bottles, mugs, and takeout containers.

Jennifer Lynes, co-founder of the Sustainable Concert Working Group, which encourages environmental sustainability in the music industry, said there are several drivers of this trend.

Concerts are major money-makers in the music biz these days. Record sales aren’t what they once were, to say the least—and many events have become huge and elaborate, said Lynes, who is also a professor in the school of environment, enterprise and development at the University of Waterloo. More complexity means more waste, an issue that has become more acute lately as the troubled global recycling system has prevented polluters from exporting as much plastic trash to China as they used to.

Larger concerts also mean larger potential impacts. According to a 2015 report from the think tank Powerful Thinking, the U.K.’s 279 summer music festivals are responsible for 20,000 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions every year—100,000, including audience travel. They also produce 23,500 tonnes of waste, of which less than a third is recycled.

Given how important touring has become to artists, giving it up isn’t in the cards. Carbon offsetting has taken off as an alternative. The San Fran-based rock band Third Eye Blind is planning to counter the effects of its 35-city 2019 tour, including a portion of audience travel, by buying certified carbon offsets from U.S.-based ClimeCo. ClimeCo also offset 3,500 tons of carbon dioxide from Pearl Jam’s 2018 tour.

This speaks to another factor driving the greening trend: leadership from environmentally-minded artists, such as Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson.

Johnson’s EnviroRider agreement, which has been in place in various forms since 2005, demands the venues where he performs follow stringent waste reduction, recycling, and carbon offsetting guidelines.

“What (Johnson) has found is that venues will sometimes do this for him, and then say, ‘Well it wasn’t that hard. Why can’t we do it all the time?’” Lynes said.

It’s true, said Tanner Watt, director of partnerships and development at Reverb. It’s no longer just the usual suspects, like Johnson, on the anti-plastic train. Reverb will be working with some of the world’s top pop acts this summer, including Pink and Fleetwood Mac.

Watt conceded that reducing single-use plastics is “low-hanging fruit” as far as environmental impacts of the music industry are concerned. Plastic poses a simple problem with fairly simple solutions that resonate with music fans—especially young ones.

“There’s all this political frustration, and all this easy access to photo and video to see negative issues up close. Young people are excited about (reducing plastic) – but even more than that, they’re excited to say they are being part of that,” he said.

While measures like the #CleanSeas pledge might seem largely symbolic, the anti-plastic campaign doesn’t amount to greenwashing, said Michèle Paulin, a professor at Concordia University who studies corporate marketing from a moral and ethical perspective.

“We start somewhere,” she said. “We understand there are big issues—but big issues like plastic in the ocean have to be dealt with using big resources.”

A measure like replacing single-use water bottles with reusable ones and refilling stations has virtuous knock-on effects, Paulin added. Cutting down on waste helps reduce the indirect costs for municipalities that want to host big events.

And it helps trigger a subtle, positive set of changes in people’s mindsets. Filling up water bottles gets people thinking about the bigger picture, Paulin said. We’ve banned plastic water bottles at festivals—why not entire cities? Next thing you know, your local community is having a conversation about protecting water as a public resource.

At least, that’s the hope.

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This is Nu, Ottawa’s first zero-waste grocery store, where virtually everything on offer comes stripped of packaging, or naked as the name suggests in French. Inside the airy 1,700 square foot space, you’ll find display cases of fresh fruits and vegetables, with no cling wrap, Styrofoam trays or spools of plastic baggies in sight. A wall of shiny stainless steel containers offers an array of oils, vinegars and soy sauce not to grab and lug home – these jugs have taps with rows of refillable glass jars sitting beneath them (in case you forget to bring your own containers from home). Even mayonnaise and ketchup come in bulk here, in the refrigerated case next to slabs of tofu, cheese and, on Thursdays, hummus.

Nu is one of over half a dozen zero-waste grocers that have sprouted up across the country over the past year or so. Already popular in Europe, there are now four in Montréal, one on Salt Spring Island and one in mid-construction in Vancouver. At their heart, they’re less supermarket and more souped-up, largely plastic-free bulk boutiques leapfrogging beyond the aisles of dried spices and beans of bulk stores past.

“It looks more and more like a grocery store where you can find everything you need,” says French teacher-turned-grocer Valerie Leloup. “We’re not 100 per cent yet, but we’re getting closer.” The former packaging buyer for Danone’s German division began living packaging-free a year and a half ago, after her mother gifted her a copy of zero-waste guru Bea Johnson’s best-selling book Zero Waste Home. “It was a bit of a logistical challenge,” says Leloup, who’d spend her Saturdays driving across town to the four or five stores that allowed her to use her own containers. “I thought that’s really not very sustainable.” So she built her own one-stop zero-waste shop in Ottawa’s west end. There’s even a wall of shampoo and laundry detergent on tap.

With reports that there’ll be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 and with images of straws and forks wedged up sea turtle noses going viral, anti-single-use plastic campaigns have been picking up steam. A wave of bars and restaurants across the continent are banishing plastic straws from drinks as part of surfrider.org’s #strawsuck campaign. Montréal has banned plastic bags by 2018, which would make it the first major city in Canada to do so, while Costa Rica, home to those plastic-ensnared turtles, recently banned all single-use plastic by 2021. Kenya’s even proposing jail time for disposable plastic bag vendors and users.

Still, as corporations like Subaru, Nestle and Unilever celebrate zero-waste-to-landfill status at manufacturing facilities and distribution centres, major grocers have been among the last to get onboard. Canadian grocers have more catching up to do than most, coming from a country that produces more garbage per capita than any other developed nation on earth, as National Zero Waste Council chair Malcolm Brodie points out. And as of yet, we have no national strategy for tackling Canada’s $31 billion food waste problem (though Ontario is currently mulling over a Nova Scotia-style ban on organic waste in landfill). Of the big three grocers, Montréal-headquartered Metro is the only one that’s publicly pledged to go zero waste in all of its stores by 2020. Notably, that doesn’t address all the disposable packaging wrapped around virtually every food item on shelves and sent home with customers.

Making sure truckloads of cardboard produce boxes are recycled and dumpster bins of unwanted veggies head to industrial composters doesn’t quite cut it with zero wasters either. Former marine mammal biologist Brianne Miller is the founder of Nada, Vancouver’s first zero-waste market, and wants to see her whole supply chain close the loop. “That’s one of our criteria to become one of our suppliers,” says Miller, who’s been holding zero-waste pop-up shops around Vancouver until her 2,300 square foot LEED Gold-certified space on East Broadway is fully built. “They essentially need to help us reduce waste not only in our business but in their business as well.”

Miller has witnessed plastic food-packaging debris swirling around remote corners of the ocean, from Borneo to Belize, and says even the most local, organic and ethical food is caught in the same disposable waste trap as other food. She’s now nudging suppliers to ditch the twist ties, plastic bags and cardboard boxes for refillable Rubbermaid bins.

Miller is working with local farmers to keep food waste in check too, and is planning a smoothie bar to process wilting produce as well as a free community fridge for the social housing tenants sharing the building.

At Montréal’s first dedicated zero-waste grocery store, which opened in summer of 2016, Épicerie Loco gives unsold produce away either to customers or their caterer, who transforms, say, bruised eggplants into baba ganoush and wilting green beans into a vegan satay dish for Loco’s cold salad bar.

Unlike major grocers who keep enormous stacks of shiny produce piled high, “we order the right amount of food,” says co-owner Martine Gariepy, who started the business with three fellow environmental studies students from Université du Québec à Montréal. “Honestly, we’re not wasting stuff like you could see behind a big grocer. We’re not stuck with big, big producers so we don’t have quota [and] we order small.”

A couple items at Loco still come in plastic bags to extend their shelf life, like the frozen vacuum-sealed fish, but instead of selling small bags of 20 frozen shrimp to customers, Loco clients can scoop as much as they need in bulk. There have been some challenges with larger suppliers promising to work within the zero-waste framework and then surprise, a box arrives with everything individually packaged. Despite the kinks, business has been thriving and Loco opened up a second location in the Montréal neighbourhood of Verdun in September after a flood of emails begged the owners to spread the love across town. This time, it’s sharing a larger space with a zero-waste cafe stocked with donated ceramic mugs.

Admittedly, the grocers are still quite niche, but indy entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones tapping into the zeitgeist. Last winter, Bulk Barn relented to consumer pressure and reversed its policy against customers bringing in their own refillable containers. VP Jason Ofield says it took a few years of coaxing his father, Bulk Barn president Craig Ofield, but the program is now mandatory in all of its 270+ locations. Between the reusable container program and implementing a four or five cent plastic bag charge, Ofield says plastic bag use is down significantly: “It’s an absolute home run.”

Can the full zero-waste concept spread to major grocers? Corporate food manufacturers aren’t likely to give up on the prime branded real estate of shiny plastic bags or oversized cardboard boxes any time soon, but zero wasters argue supermarkets of the future may be left with little choice but to shift away from excessive disposable packaging and flagrant food waste.

“We’re a large number of people on a finite planet with a limited amount of resources, so as time goes on people are going to have to become aware of their consumption and where products are ending up,” says Nada’s Miller. “I think the zero-waste movement is here to stay, ultimately out of necessity.”

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