CONTEXT

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be banned single-use plastics in the country from 2021.
• It a global challenge to phase out the plastic bags, straws and cutlery clogging the world’s oceans.

BACKGROUND

• Canada has a unique chance to lead the fight against plastic pollution as the country with the world’s longest coastlines.
• Less than 10 percent of plastics used in Canada are currently recycled.
• Each year a million birds and more than 100,000 marine mammals worldwide suffer injury or death by becoming entangled in plastic or ingesting it through the food chain. Single-use items represent some 70 percent of the plastic waste littering the marine environment.
• Canada, France, Germany, Britain and Italy, along with the European Union, subscribed at last year’s G7 summit in Quebec to a new charter against pollution in the world’s oceans.
• The United States and Japan did not join the pact.
• The non-binding Ocean Plastics Charter called on participating countries and the EU to commit to making all plastics reusable, recyclable or recovered by 2030.