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TORONTO – Canada's efforts to reduce single-use plastic will be encouraged this year when a major retailer is about to launch a reusable packaging test in the most populated part of the country.
The channel's identity is set to be unveiled this spring and online operations will begin by the end of the year, said the founder of TerraCycle's Loop Recycling Company.
"As a Canadian, I am very excited to be creating Loop to Canada, and I think the public will be very well received," said Tom Szaky, who grew up in Toronto.
Residents living within 200 to 300 hundred kilometers of Canada's largest city will be able to purchase hundreds of products in reusable packaging made by some of the world's leading brands, including Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Nestle.
Products ranging from Haagen-Dazs ice cream to shampoo, toothbrushes and laundry detergent packaged in specially designed reusable containers will be ordered online through the retailer's e-commerce site and delivered with other store purchases. In-store purchases should follow approximately six months later.
Greenhouse Juice Co., a start-up company in the cold-pressed juice sector, will also participate in the project, demonstrating that this product is not just for big monsters, he said.
This system is apparent in the former slag delivery service that was ubiquitous in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Loop is really a reflection of an old idea but in a very modern setting," said Szaky.
A deposit will be charged for the container and will be refunded when the unwashed ship is returned to the next delivery or store.
Recycling efforts are being launched as companies – including major retailers, airlines and fast-food chains – have joined the global movement to reduce single-use plastics. The material has attracted negative attention from images of a floating waste island in the Pacific Ocean and entangled oceanic wildlife.
Retailers, including Ikea, Walmart, KFC, A & W, Starbucks and Subway, have pledged to eliminate plastic straws and are looking for plastic alternatives for lids and cutlery. Air Canada says it's going to replace millions of plastic sticks with wood on all flights starting this summer. The parent company of Tim Hortons has announced that it will unveil its efforts to tackle the problem in the coming months, start testing a new lid without straw this year and increase the amount of recycled content in packaging .
Retailers, suppliers, consumer goods companies and governments are taking action after the research reveals the scale of the challenge, said Kathleen McLaughlin, chief sustainability officer at Walmart Inc.
The world's largest retailer has pledged in Canada to further reduce plastic bags, replace plastic straws with paper, and eliminate "hard-to-recycle" PVC, expanded polystyrene and unnecessary plastic packaging in all its own private label products.
McLaughlin denies that Walmart simply engaged in a public relations exercise.
"No, it's real action," she said in an interview. "We are trying to change the way people produce and consume products."
Loblaw Companies Ltd. says look for solutions to plastic and food waste and take steps to reduce the number of plastic crate bags, increase the number of recyclable packaging and eliminate synthetic microbeads in its private label products.
"The challenge of plastics will not be solved by one-off actions – it requires the work of industry, governments and consumers – and a system built to manage the environmental, social and business opportunities and risks badociated with waste. "said spokesman Kevin Groh. written in an email.
Metro Inc. plans to unveil its approach to reduce waste, including plastic, by the middle of the year. Sobey 's agrees with customers who complain about having too much plastic packaging, adding that he was working with suppliers and partners of the company. industry to reduce the amount of plastic used in packaging and other products.
While agreeing that plastic waste is unacceptable, the Canadian plastics industry is opposed to attacks on a lightweight, cost-effective product that extends product life and promotes food safety.
"I do not think these companies are interested in science," said Joe Hruska, vice president of sustainability at the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. "They're like any business, reacting to consumer pressure and consumers just do not know the facts."
He reports a 2016 study by Trucost, an environmental data and risk badysis company, concluding that replacing plastics with alternative materials would almost quadruple environmental costs, as less plastic materials are used. throughout the life cycle "products.
Canadians produce about 3.25 million tonnes of plastic waste, or about 140,000 garbage trucks, each year, according to Greenpeace Canada.
Sarah King, head of a campaign on oceans and plastics for the environmental group, says it's too important to be able to improve recyclability or increase recycled content, while only 10 to 12% of products are recycled in Canada.
For too long, consumers have been unfairly responsible for recycling better and disposing of waste properly, instead of forcing large packaging companies to find alternatives, King said.
"We want to return to a more holistic and less eliminationist model," she said.
Szaky said that Loop entrusts the ownership of the containers to manufacturers who will then be motivated to make the packaging sustainable.
The system will be launched in New York and Paris this spring.
Other Canadian cities, probably from the western provinces, will be added to the construction of a distribution network.
The loop is just one of many strategies to address the problem, says Tony Walker, an badistant professor at Dalhousie University's School for Resource and Environmental Studies.
"There is no single answer to this problem, it is a very complex environmental challenge and so there is no silver bullet, we just have to find many solutions."
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