Letter to Toronto City Council

RE: The Plastic Bag Fee

Toronto City Council votes in June on whether or not to scrap the city's plastic bag fee. Please feel free to use the letter below as a template for contacting your city council representative to encourage them to vote NO to scrapping the bag fee.

Dear [insert councillor's name],

I am extremely disappointed by the results of last week's vote by the city council executive committee to rescind the plastic bag fee in Toronto. I believe that the plastic bag fee has proven its ability to decrease the use of plastic bags (a reduction of more than 50% in less than 3 years!) and has encouraged businesses to provide alternatives to single-use plastic bags. You may not be aware, but an average plastic grocery bag is used for less than ten minutes before being discarded and takes between 100-1000 years to break down. Plastics, such as polyethylene (which is what most single-use bags are made from), will not biodegrade. Instead, they photo-degrade - essentially breaking down into smaller pieces.

The process of mass-producing, recycling, and incinerating plastic bags relies heavily on non-renewable resources (including petroleum and natural gas), releases a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (approximately 6kgs of CO2 per 1kg of polyethylene), and is detrimental to the environment. I am extremely concerned with the environmental repercussions posed from single-use plastic bags and as my representative in Ward [insert #], I ask you to please defend the plastic bag fee (as well as motions to revamp it) and share the benefits of this by-law at the next city council meeting.

Thank-you,

[insert name]

For a list of councillors' email addresses, click here.

For Mayor Rob Ford's contact info, click here.

I'll be keeping you up to date on Toronto's plastic bag fee, so stay tuned!

And be sure to follow on Twitter @PPSProject for additional

content and updates!

Thanks for reading!

The Five Cent Debate

If you live in Toronto, then you may have already heard that Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford, has been scheming to abolish the city's 5 cent plastic bag fee. The fee was introduced as a by-law on June 1, 2009 and required retailers to charge consumers a minimum of 5 cents per plastic bag. The intent was to reduce 70% of the city's plastic bag use by encouraging the use of reusable bags.

 

Global statistics for plastic bag consumption are staggering. It was estimated in 2001 that between 400 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are produced each year and something like 1% are actually recycled. The other 99% end up in landfills or, even worse, in our waterways, causing major problems for wildlife.  An average plastic shopping bag is used for 5 minutes before being discarded and takes up to 1000 years to break down. Most shopping bags are made from polyethylene and do not biodegrade, instead they photodegrade - essentially breaking down into smaller pieces called nurdles. This is what environmentalists (and the media) are talking about when they refer to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or "Garbage Island" - a patch of debris "twice the size of Texas" floating in the Pacific Ocean. It's not really an island, but essentially a toxic soup made up of nurdles. One of the major issues is that these bits of plastic are often mistaken for food and consumed by marine life.

For the 1% of plastic bags that are actually recycled, the process of recycling (and manufacturing) Polyethylene requires large amounts of non-renewable resources, including petroleum and natural gas (see my blog post, Life is Plastic, for more info on types of plastics). Moreover, it costs more to recycle a plastic shopping bag then it does to manufacture a new one, so they are often tossed.

Pollution and energy concerns resulting from single-use plastic bags have gained a lot of attention recently. All over the world, cities (and in some cases entire countries and states) are implementing plastic bag fees in order to reduce manufacturing and consumption. Some places, including San Francisco, Mexico City, Italy, and Hawaii, have gone so far as to ban plastic bags altogether. Most surprisingly, China banned plastic bags in 2008 and in only 3 years, retail usage of plastic bags has dropped over 66%. That is over 24 billion bags (60,000 tonnes of plastic), which is equivalent to 3.6 million tonnes of oil. As a direct result of the plastic bag ban, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by over 10 million tonnes.

Since its inception in 2009, Toronto's plastic bag by-law has been credited with helping Toronto reduce its plastic bag consumption by more than half.  Despite being an effective way to encourage consumers to reduce waste and use plastic bag alternatives, a city committee made up of executive council members voted last week to scrap the bag fee entirely. Next month, city council will vote on the matter and decide the fate of the program. Canada is already gaining attention for controversial environmental policies and scrapping the plastic bag fee here in Toronto is pushing us further into the wrong direction. Perhaps the policy needs to be be revamped, as some city councillors, such as Michelle Berardinetti, have suggested. However, considering that in just 3 years the by-law has made a powerful impact and looking at the results of the rest of the world's bag bans and fees, scrapping it altogether seems short sighted and ignorant.

If you support the plastic bag fee (or perhaps even a ban altogether), then I encourage you to write your city council representative and ask them to vote NO to scrapping the bag tax next month. Let them know how important it is to you to reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in Toronto's landfills.

For a list of councillors' email addresses, click here.

For Mayor Rob Ford's contact info, click here.

For a letter already written for you and just needs to be sent, see my next post, Letter to Toronto City Council.  Simply copy & paste into your email and hit send. Simple.

I'll be keeping you up to date on Toronto's plastic bag fee, so stay tuned!

And be sure to follow on Twitter @PPSProject for additional

content and updates!

Thanks for reading!

Plastic(less) Spring

My apologies for taking so long to update my blog. I intended to write a new post at least once a month and I have obviously failed miserably at doing that! I can’t believe my last entry was December! My plastic-free Christmas gifts were a hit, by the way, and although most of my friends and family still seem rather confused about my plastic-free project, they seemed to appreciate the thought and effort I put into hand-making all of their gifts.

Spring came early to Toronto and I am hoping that all this sunshine will keep me motivated to stay on top of things here on the Plastic Pollution Solution blog.

So what have I been doing with myself for the last three months, you may be wondering? I can assure you that although I haven’t been updating my blog, I have remained extremely committed to this project and cutting down on my personal plastic consumption.

I spent the winter attempting to reduce my plastic waste and collecting (most of) the plastics I did have to purchase or had already purchased before I started this project. The exception to this were things that were unsanitary and I didn’t want to keep in the house. I recycled those products properly. But as my collection grew (and ended up taking over a large portion of my sun room), I came up with creative solutions to avoid (most of) the products I had been using that were packaged in plastic.

As I came up with new solutions to avoid plastic waste, I made the realization that I needed to start doing a lot more at home and I couldn’t keep relying on commercial products if I wanted to go plastic-free. With that realization came some pretty big changes this spring (and not all of them were directly plastic related):

In my quest to avoid buying plastic bottles, I’ve discovered how to make my own cleaning products. My cleaning products are now homemade, organic, biodegradable, hypoallergenic, and environmentally friendly. Moreover, I found a use for some of the empty plastic bottles in my sun room! I now reuse them and refill them each week with homemade cleaners. The process is actually pretty easy. I use varying combinations of baking soda, vinegar, and laundry detergent to create replacements for varying commercial cleaners, including Vim, Windex, and Lysol.

Baking Soda + Water + Laundry detergent = Great Bathroom Cleaner

I’ve also saved a lot of money by doing this. The price of commercial cleaners is actually quite high compared to the price of a bottle of vinegar and a box of baking soda (which goes a long way, by the way). The only downfall is that I haven’t been able to find white vinegar in anything other than a plastic bottle. 

I often find myself asking, "What's worse, a plastic vinegar bottle or the toxins from commercial cleaners"? And this type of question doesn't just occur in the cleaning isle of a grocery store, but I also have this internal debate in the produce isle s well: "What's worse for the environment, local apples packaged in plastic, or unpacked apples imported from China?" Not being able to find an easy answer to these questions, I started avoiding big chain grocery stores altogether and have been making more of an effort to go to farmer's markets, such as the Dufferin Grove Park Farmer's Market, and independent grocers. 

Moreover, I started a herb and tomato garden here at home. With warm weather hitting Toronto much earlier than usual, my parsley, basil, tomatoes, and a few flowers I planted are already starting to grow on my window sill! I haven’t had a garden since I was a child and this is one hobby that I have wanted to get back into for years. There’s nothing quite like cooking with fresh herbs and vegetables straight from your backyard! That moment when you are rewarded with all your hard work is always a beautiful one. And for those of you who know me, you know how much I love to cook, so I’m really looking forward to the rest of the spring and summer and sharing with you the progress of my garden and the great meals I have gotten from it!

And what is a backyard garden without a composter? I bought a backyard composter last week from the City of Toronto for only $15. For an extra $5 I got it delivered right to my house! Compare that to the price of a composter at Canadian Tire and I've saved over $50! It arrived earlier this week and I’m super excited to start composting right here at home. Although the City of Toronto offers a Green Bin Program that collects organic waste, the benefits of a composter at home is that it reduces the amount of waste you send to a landfill (which reduces the release of methane gas),  you're not relying on trucks and heavy machinery (which use non-renewable resources and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), not to mention all of the benefits a composter will have on your garden! The composter I purchased is made from recycled plastic and can be purchased at the City of Toronto's website.

The other big change I've recently made, is that I’ve been washing my laundry by hand (who has time to write a blog when you’re washing your clothes by hand, right?). No, I'm not crazy. There's no laundry facilities in my apartment and I have to go to the laundry mat to wash my clothes. So I figured it might actually be a lot less of a hassle to just start washing my clothes at home by hand. I bought a great clothesline for my backyard and since the weather’s been so good, I’ve actually kind of enjoyed the process of washing and hanging my clothes. My clothes smell fresher and cleaner and I’ve managed to avoid the crowded and hot laundry mat for at least a month now! Not to mention, it's great exercise, I'm saving electricity, I'm avoiding harmful chemicals in commercial laundry detergents, my clothes last longer, and my pets seem happier now that I'm spending more time at home and less time at a laundry mat!

Hand Washing

+

Air Drying

=

Happy Bunny!

I also bought a really great travelling coffee mug made from porcelain and rubber from Home Hardware and have been trying to remember to bring it with me everywhere. This was probably one of the hardest changes I have made (though I am embarrassed that I hadn’t made it sooner). I drink a lot of coffee and go to a lot of coffee shops, so I’ve sort of struggled with remembering the mug so that I don’t have to use those single-use paper/plastic cups from restaurants and coffee places, but I know I can improve in this area!

-       I also bought a stainless steel water bottle (if you’ve been reading the blog, you already know that I stole my mother’s water bottle). Now I have my own! And I am very, very proud to say that since I’ve started this project I have not used or purchased a single plastic water bottle. Not one! 

   

Moreover, I started buying milk in glass bottles. Actually, this may amaze you (since it completely shocked me), but Qi Natural Foods on Roncesvalles sells Harmony Organic milk (which is delicious, local, and comes in 1 litre glass bottles) for $2.99. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been paying a heck of a lot more than that for organic milk in the grocery store and they come in single-use cartons made from cardboard and lined with plastic. The only downfall is that Harmony Organic uses plastic lids instead of metal caps, but I don't think I'm at a point in my life where I can purchase my own cow.

Last, but certainly not least, my quest to end my personal use of single-use plastic bags has been successful! I’ve been using paper bags and biodegradable bags for produce and bulk foods, like grains and nuts, reusable bags at the checkout counter, and for the most part I just leave produce out and don’t need to put it in any sort of bag. Recently, there has been some movement towards banning plastic produce bags in grocery stores. It makes sense. Why stop at the check out counter? 

There are many alternatives to using plastic produce bags. You can purchase reusable produce bags that are made from mosquito netting or organic cotton. If you have bought these types of bags before, please leave your review in the comments section below. I'd love to hear what you think of them. Not willing to spend the money? You can also make them yourself, which I think is what I will do when I get my hands on a sewing machine.

Now that I have provided you with numerous excuses on why I haven't updated this blog in so long, it's time for me to start diving into more serious stuff! A couple years ago, Toronto implemented a five cent fee for single-use plastic bags at retail check-out counters. This tax has resulted in an overall reduction of plastic bag use by 80%. Unfortunately, Toronto's new mayor, Rob Ford, is against this bag tax and would like to see it scrapped. My next blog promises to dive into the 5 cent debate and also follow any changes concerning plastic produce bag bans, so stay tuned!

And be sure to follow on Twitter @PPSProject for additional

content and updates!

Thanks for reading!