Activist Dianne Peterson places a sign on a public art installation outside a United Nations conference on plastics on April 23 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says the federal government is looking for homegrown solutions to deal with plastic waste as Ottawa hosts an international conference to develop a global treaty to combat plastic pollution.
Delegates from 174 countries are in Ottawa for the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC-4, seeking to develop a legally binding plastic treaty by the end of 2024.
“The way we are currently recycling plastics just won’t cut it,” Mr. Guilbeault told reporters Tuesday, saying plastics damage the environment, waterways and habitats, posing a threat to wildlife. “It is now impacting human health.”
The conference, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme, is the second-last session toward the development of a global treaty.
Mr. Guilbeault said Canada is hoping to clean up approximately 70 per cent of the treaty text before the final session of this negotiating committee in South Korea at the end of the year.
“We want this treaty to eliminate plastic pollution by 2040. We won’t ban our way out of plastic pollution, we won’t recycle our way out of plastic pollution,” he said.
“We will reuse our way out of plastic pollution. We need to do a bit of all of these things at different steps and then for different types of plastics.”
During the last treaty talks in November in Nairobi, 130 governments strongly supported requiring companies to disclose how much plastic they are producing and which chemicals they are using in the process.
With plastics production on track to triple by 2060, supporters say such disclosures are a basic first step in controlling harmful plastic waste – the vast majority of which ends up marring landscapes, clogging waterways or filling up landfills.
On Tuesday, Mr. Guilbeault announced $3.3-million to support 21 businesses and organizations in developing technology to address plastic waste and pollution.
Part of the funding will allow for nine small and medium-sized businesses to get up to $150,000 to develop such technology. The remaining funding, which is more than $2-million, will be distributed among 12 recipients for the development of circular solutions, which involve extending the life of products by reusing them as long as possible.
Mr. Guilbeault said that since 2018, more than $12-million has been invested in supporting Canadian businesses and organizations that are finding solutions to plastic pollution and promoting building a circular economy.
“To do this in a comprehensive way, we will need to mobilize Canadian-made solutions,” he said.
Dimple Roy, director of water management of the International Institute for Sustainable Development Experimental Lakes Area, said many of the actions in place to deal with microplastics in freshwater are addressing the problem in “a small way.”
With the current treaty negotiations focusing on marine systems, the institute is asking for more inclusive language to be used, such as aquatic systems, which would include both marine and freshwater systems.
“Canada is a freshwater-rich country,” Ms. Roy said.
“Our own work is showing how much of these plastics have gotten into even remote lakes like the ones at the Experimental Lakes Area. We’re saying, let’s try and tackle some of the issues in freshwater systems along with marine systems,” she said.
Ms. Roy said she hopes the treaty negotiations at INC-4 will be successful in looking at the entire life cycle of plastics, which includes reducing plastic production in addition to dealing with plastic waste.
“If we want less microplastics in our freshwater, we need less plastics produced and used,” she said.
On Monday, Mr. Guilbeault announced the creation of a federal plastics registry that will monitor how these products are managed throughout their life cycle.
It will require plastic producers to annually declare the types of plastic and the quantity they supply, and how they move through the economy, including where they end up.
With a report from Reuters