Eleven years ago, a small group of Australians challenged their neighbours to stop creating plastic waste for a month. The Plastic-free July campaign has since grown and spread around the world, with millions of individual participants now making some effort to reduce the amount of plastic they use and discard during the 31-day challenge.
The Canadian government’s recent passing of legislation to ban the manufacture, import and sale of single-use plastic grocery bags, Styrofoam takeout containers, plastic cutlery, stir sticks, straws and six-pack rings in Canada was timed well for those taking part in the campaign here in the True North, even though the ban for most of the targeted items comes into effect in December.
The federal legislation comes on top of local initiatives. In B.C., more than 20 municipalities are developing bylaws directed at single-use plastics under the province’s 2021 amendments to the Community Charter. Esquimalt, Nanaimo, Saanich, Tofino, Ucluelet and Victoria are among the communities that implemented bans under earlier provincial rules.
Despite the name of the July campaign, living entirely plastic-free is actually no longer possible. In the 160 years since the process to produce plastic was discovered and the 70 years since plastics started becoming commonplace, plastic has pervaded our lives, our planet and our bodies. In some form or other, it surrounds us.
It’s found on polar islands. It’s in the ice atop the highest, most remote glaciers. Researchers have found it in sediments collected from the bottom of some of the deepest ocean canyons.
It’s in many of the everyday products we use. The glues that hold together the composite wood products that make up our homes and the furniture that fills our homes are made of plastic.
Finding socks and jeans that don’t contain at least some spandex or other synthetic fibre is becoming more and more difficult. Our food is transported, sold, wrapped, contained and cradled in plastic. Our washing machines and clothes dryers spew it into our waste water and into the air.
It’s in the soil, rivers, lakes and oceans. It is picked up and dispersed on the wind, reaching high levels of the atmosphere.
As it weathers and abrades, the plastic that makes up grocery bags, drinking straws, shampoo bottles, takeout containers, fleece jackets, sweat-wicking socks, etc., breaks off and breaks down into ever-smaller pieces. As this process continues, the resulting pieces can be the size of grains of sand.
Those break down further into particles no larger than proteins or viruses and can be detected only with a microscope or other fancy equipment.
Those tiny plastic particles are found in the water we drink and the air we breathe. They even find their way into the tissues of the animals and plants we eat.
All this means plastics are also found in our bodies. Scientists have found evidence of plastic contamination in tissues from the lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys of donated human cadavers.
All this is to say that, at every scale, plastic is everywhere. And despite changing size and shape, it is going to stick around for a very long time.
So avoiding using plastic altogether or eliminating all plastic from our lives is basically beyond us at this point. It’s there (and everywhere), whether we want it or not.
Nor would we want to eliminate all uses of plastic or plastic products. For example, medical equipment and devices made from plastic or containing plastic components have been saving and improving lives for decades. The number of ptomaine poisonings from improper food processing or storage has also fallen in recent decades, thanks to plastics.
But reducing the amount of plastic waste we create on a daily basis is possible.
Nobody claims national or local bans on single-use plastic products will solve the global plastic-pollution crisis. The six items on the federal government list make up only about five per cent of the plastic waste generated in Canada in 2019. Nor does the ban address the export of single-used plastics from Canada.
But for people who find reducing their use and disposal of plastics difficult or who can’t be bothered, bans nudge communities and Canadian society as a whole in that direction.
