Single use plastic ban coming to Canada

[Catherine]

Quote:In French supermarkets, use of single-use bags were discontinued many years before the official ban. Each supermarket gave out one *free* reusable bag to each customer with a fidelity card (to avoid people asking again and again). As we has several fidelity cards with several different stores, we landed up with enough bags for all our shopping. These bags "live on" even today, as they are replaced free of charge when they get too many holes or cracks.

This idea I like. Our supermarket reusable bags are only a dollar, but the idea of a free bag is appealing.

France is clearly ahead of Canada in this. Some of us reuse plastic bags, but many people just discard them, often just littering at the same time. We are just as bad about plastic water bottles. We have perfectly good tap water. In the secret taste test at our Science Centre I always choose the tap water. People still insist upon buying bottled water. Then they carelessly discard the bottles.

Toronto has a recycling and composting program. The city issued large green coloured bins for food waste.  Then they reissued the green bins with racoon proof locking lids. People are terrible about using them. They toss garbage in with the food waste and food waste in with the garbage. I came home and found a racoon sitting in my garbage can eating the food waste that should have been in the locking green bin.

People in the French countryside must care about doing the right thing. That is why you are careful about recycling and composting.
Too many people in Canada don't care. They think it is too much trouble to put things in the right can.  Even when we ban single use plastics people will not comply. The cities will have to start fining people before they do the right thing.

Many Canadians do care, but so many do not.