Hamilton Ward 3 Councillor Nrinder Nann will introduce a motion that asks staff to determine which single use plastics are not accepted by the city’s recycling program and identify alternatives. She also wants to see the city by accountable for their own facilities.
Nann says “At a certain point, we need to stop doing business as usual and say what could we be doing better?'”. She goes on “It’s that standard of excellence, and moving towards that, is our opportunity here at the city”.
She advocates working with waste management, environmental services and event organizers to make an impact. She believes that the city has an onus as event permitters to educate and enforce zero plastic waste at public events.
One of the biggest problems people face daily is a choice imposed onto them by the food industry. Many of the options aren’t optimal for recycling. In fact, many compostable and biodegradable take out containers are more cost efficient for restaurant owners when buying in bulk.
Lynda Lukasik, the executive director for Environment Hamilton says, “zero waste is going to be challenging because we live in a world, especially right here in Hamilton, and North America where we’ve got a lot of packaging waste that’s imposed on us”, and that “higher levels of government need to make some policy changes that force manufacturers to stop packaging products in packaging that we have no option but to throw in the garbage”.
