FCM Resolution Advocating for a National Plastics Reduction Strategy

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is calling on the Government of Canada to develop a National Plastics Reduction Strategy that seeks to eliminate plastic pollution, with regulations aimed at:

1. Eliminating the use of problematic products and packaging that pollute our environment such as the industrial use of micro-plastics including, but not limited to, microbeads, needles, fibrous microplastics and fragments;
2. Reducing consumer and industrial use of single-use plastics, including, but not limited to, plastic bags, bottles, straws, tableware, polystyrene (foam), plastic tea bags, cigarette filters, and beverage containers;
3. Implementing standards to ensure that products and packaging that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable;
4. Incenting the reduction of waste, reusability of products and packaging, and ensuring all products and packaging can practically be recycled;
5. Establishing consistent national definitions (e.g. circular economy, resource recovery and recycling), performance standards, and measurement protocols for achieving targets;
6. Developing a national single-use plastics reduction and recycling performance standard;
7. Establishing a national single-use plastics recycled content performance standard;
8. Supporting commodity markets that incent the use of secondary materials over virgin materials; and
9. Making the producers of products and packaging directly responsible for reducing resource
10. Identify plastics and plastic additives that are toxic or cannot feasibly be collected and recycled and ban or regulate their import, use, and sale;
11. Setting national plastic reduction and recovery targets that are measurable and encourage a transition to a circular economy; and
12. Creating incentives for waste management systems and infrastructure that increase the recovery, reuse, recycling and composting of products and

Source: NZWC