Wednesday morning at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson unveiled a list of plastic items that are harmful to the environment and hard to recycle, that will soon be banned.
The single-use plastics that will be banned are:
- Grocery checkout bags
- Straws
- Stir sticks
- Six-pack rings
- Plastic cutlery
- Food takeout containers made from hard-to-recycle plastics (like black plastic packaging)
“When a ban comes into effect, your local stores will be providing you with alternatives to these plastic products, like reusable or paper bags in place of plastic,” Wilkinson said.
“I know it is presently hard to come back from the grocery store without a single use plastic item … You use it, you throw it in the recycling bin and more often than not, it ends up in a landfill. This has to change, which is why we’ll be working with grocers and industry leaders and provinces and territories to keep more plastic in our economy through recycling.”
