The City of Victoria is drafting a new bylaw designed to reduce the number of disposable cups and food containers that fill the city’s garbage cans.
The bylaw will allow the distribution of single-use straws, utensils, stir sticks and condiment packages only when requested by customers, and require restaurants to provide reusable products for food and beverages consumed on the premises.
A third prong of the motion passed Thursday asks that city staff report on alternatives to imposing a 25-cent fee for disposable cups and takeout containers to speed the transition to reusable items.
Coun. Jeremy Caradonna suggested the amendment, noting the 25-cent fee did not work in Vancouver.
“I have a very low level of confidence that a 25-cent fee is going to move the needle much,” he said.
He suggested fees closer to $1 per cup or container would likely have more effect, but said he is loath to download more cost on consumers as food costs rise, and instead suggested city staff explore other options.
Last month, Vancouver city council voted to scrap its 25-cent fee on single-use cups. The fee, which has been in place for a year, will disappear by June 1.
It’s estimated that nearly 225,000 disposable cups are thrown away each day in Vancouver.
In Victoria, city staff estimate as many as 75,000 single-use items are tossed every day by residents, and when businesses and institutions are added to the mix, the number jumps to 220,000 items.
Victoria collects about five million single-use items every year at curbside, and another nine million from city garbage cans.
The most common item in the public garbage is the disposable cup, which is tossed away at a rate of 13,000 a day, while an estimated 6,300 food containers end up in garbage pails daily, along with 5,800 straws.
The city has 1,200 public garbage cans and at peak times of the year, city staff empty them up to four times a day.
Victoria is aiming to reduce waste across the community by 50 per cent by 2040 and sees eliminating single-use items as a means of getting there.
Coun. Dave Thompson said Victoria has made some progress but needs to keep going. “The landfill has a limited life and we also really need to contain the staff costs of collecting all that waste,” he said.
The new bylaw must be approved by the B.C. environment minister before it can be adopted. That approval period could take months.
Once council adopts the bylaw, businesses have three months to comply with the requirement to distribute utensils and condiments only to customers who ask for them, and nine months to comply with the requirement to use reusable products for food and beverages consumed on the premises of the business.
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