Toronto working itself into a corner

Last week the Toronto city council decided that they are going to implement a 5 cent tax on all plastic retail bags. This tax will have a positive environmental effect since it will reduce Toronto's consumption of plastic bags.

Another thing the council decided on was a ban of biodegradable and compostable bags. The logic behind the banning of biodegradable bags was to ensure that these biodegradable plastics do not get mixed in with standard plastics for recycling as it would lessen the quality of the plastic.

What the council presumably failed to see was that only 1-4% of plastic retail bags are recycled. Since recycled bags have to be clean of any dirt or contaminants and due to our poor recycling habits very few of them actually get recycled. This amount of plastic makes up a very small portion of plastics being recycled. It seems ridiculous to believe that the minuscule amount of biodegradable plastics that would end up in the recycling stream could have an effect on the finished recycled product.

The only reason biodegradable plastics are in our recycling system right now is because of the failure of our passive governments to recognize a good thing and regulate biodegradable plastics. There are no Canadian government standards on what can be called biodegradable as there are in places like California. The majority of Canadian municipalities running composting programs will only allow bags certified by an American organization (The Biodegradable Products Institute or BPI) which does no testing themselves and only owns the rights to a compost indicating logo. The act of certifying a product with them costs upwards of $5 000 USD.

Since the government has not done anything about regulating the bio-plastics industry, manufacturers and governing bodies have been left to rely on for-profit third party companies to offer a solution. This lack of government control has also resulted in poor quality biodegradable plastics (none of which would be suitable for composting facilities) since manufacturers will take the cheapest production method possible if not regulated.

What the Canadian Government and other governments need to do is set some standards for biodegradable plastic bags. Biodegradable retail bags should all have to be a distinctive colour. This colour should be one that isn't often seen in the retail bag world such as dark brown because:

• If the biodegradable bags were all a distinct colour then they could be easily recognized and removed from the plastic for recycling.

• This simple step would help commercial compost facilities since the government would set national biodegradable bag standards. This would reduce the amount of plastic then end up with in their final compost product since they could remove all plastic that is not the bidoegradable colour.

• It would reduce on the number of plastic bags used since the price of biodegradable plastics has dropped drastically in the past few years and the cost of a biodegradable bag could be paid for by using the money from the plastic bag and 5 cent bag tax.

• Retail stores would have added reason to impose biodegradable bags with the new plastic bag tax being implemented. The single recognizable colour would also be a benefit to them in terms of marketing since it would make it seem to consumers that they're putting forth effort to help the environment.

Please write to your local, provincial, and federal politicians in order to make them aware of issues such as these and to ensure that we do everything possible to keep the planet in a livable condition.