e-2958 (Environment)

Petition to the Government of Canada

• The Liberal Government campaigned on a promise to ban some single use plastics;
• By declaring plastic as a toxic substance, they have taken a bold step in the fight against our addiction to plastic;
• We applaud these measures; however, they do not go far enough;
• The energy needed to make bottled water is up to 2000 times the energy needed for the equivalent volume of tap water;
• It takes more water to create the plastic bottle than the water bottle will actually hold. (Gleick, P.H. and Cooley, H.S. “Energy implications of bottled water.” (Environmental Research Letters 4 (2009)) ;
• Water bottlers have zero responsibility when it comes to the waste their bottles create;
• Every human is ingesting nearly 2000 particles of plastic a week, five grams of plastics, the equivalent of one plastic credit card;
• More than half the plastic on Earth has been created since 2002, and it’s on pace to double by 2030 (Planet Plastic, Rolling Stone, March 3,2020);
• A landmark study in the journal Science Advances found that 91% of the 6.3 trillion kilograms of plastic waste has never been recycled, not even once;
• Unlike aluminum, which can be recycled again and again, plastic degrades in reprocessing;
• Recycling has a limited value and we cannot rely on it as a solution; and
• In Ontario alone, one billion plastic water bottles are sent to landfill every year (Environmental Defence).