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National ban on single-use plastic items starts next month

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A national ban on single-use plastic items will take place next month, a year later than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau originally promised.

As of Dec. 20, it will no longer be legal in Canada to manufacture or import most plastic shopping bags or straws, along with stir sticks, cutlery and takeout containers.

Trudeau promised in 2019 that some single-use plastics would be banned by 2021 in an effort to cut down on national plastic waste. It took the government a year longer than it planned to figure out which items to ban and how to do it.

READ MORE: Canada set to clamp down on more single-use plastics

The single-use items the government is starting with meet two criteria: they are commonly found polluting nature, and they can be replaced by readily available alternatives that already exist.

The country’s low recycling rates are blamed in part on the fact that a wide variety of plastics are used, which is difficult for recycling facilities to handle.

The manufacturing and importing of six-pack plastic rings for drink containers will be banned in June 2023, with their sale completely coming to an end a year after that.

But Canadians appear to be actively cutting back on their personal use of plastic straws and grocery bags themselves ahead of the national ban.

A Statistics Canada survey on households and the environment taken every two years found that between 2019 and 2021, the number of Canadians who regularly used plastic straws fell slightly, and the number who more regularly remembered to bring reusable bags on shopping trips went up.

READ MORE: Canada publishes final regulations to prohibit single-use plastics

“Enough is enough,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a tweet.

About 22 million tonnes of plastic ends up where it shouldn’t every year, including in lakes, rivers and oceans worldwide, he said.

Canada is one of the most wasteful countries in the world. World Bank data on municipal solid waste shows that, on average, every Canadian throws out 706 kilograms of garbage each year.

Among G7 countries, that is higher than everywhere but the United States, which discards 812 kilograms per person each year.

In Canada, about 29,000 tonnes of plastic garbage, mainly packaging, ends up in the environment each year.

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