The mayor of Montreal has announced that the city will be banning single-use plastic bags by 2018. The wait is intended to give consumers and retailers 2 years to adjust before the ban kicks in. The 2-year adjustment period could be significantly shortened, but nonetheless it is exciting to see a city mayor recognizing how necessary the banning of unnecessary and harmful single use packaging is.
“Lightweight bags, which are used by the billions, are volatile and represent a clear environmental concern.”
This measure is necessary because banning single use plastic bags creates a consequence for not bringing your reusable bag. It is this consequence that will help people to remember to bring it, and it is the lack of consequence right now that has led to plastic bags being used so often and thoughtlessly.
The city is also considering a future ban on plastic water bottles. I find it shocking that one of the first responses by a big corporation was that this would limit the consumer’s choice. What about the planet’s choice to survive? That corporations are using the protection of consumer’s choices as the primary argument to debate such a ban only demonstrates how unnecessary single use plastic water bottles are. We have free clean potable water in Canada. How does it deprive us to drink that water out of a reusable water bottle rather than a single use plastic one? The same principle of banning plastic bags applies here. Habits play an important role in these kinds of behaviors. It is important to give people a consequence so that they change their habits, and remembering their reusable bags and water bottles becomes routine.
Single use coffee cups are another unnecessary packaging to be concerned about. Recyclable or not, consumption is consumption.
“According to the UBC SEEDS Sustainability Program, at least 1.5 million disposable coffee cups are generated on campus each year. In one day of data collection, 490 coffee cups were found with only 17 % correctly sorted into the proper waste bins.”
This number of cups, and discouraging rate of recycling per day on an annual level produces an astonishing amount of waste. I’m proud to say that a friend has contributed to reducing this waste here at UBC through a pilot project called Mugshare. UBC is currently funding the project to see if it will work. The idea is that you pay a 5$ deposit to be able to use the mugs. You can then get hot beverages in a reusable mug at Sprouts, Seedlings or Agora Café, and take it to go. You can return your mug at any one of the locations, up to 3 days later, and they will clean it for you. The long-term goal is to have a campus-wide mug share program, which I think would be wildly successful. After plastic bags and water bottles, this should be the next single use packaging to ban. The optimist in me would like to give people the choice to make the sustainable decision, and bring reusable cups but even I will get a coffee in a take away cup if I forget my mug. The key is that it’s possible I would forget my mug less were there not a single use cup to fall back on. Without directly inconveniencing people who forget to bring their reusable items I do not foresee a drastic change in the consumption patterns and habits that are so ingrained in our society.
Articles
http://ubyssey.ca/culture/mugshare-reducing-disposable-cups-since-1918/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/denis-coderre-plastic-bag-ban-future-montreal-1.3458240
