Toronto City Council Bans Plastic Bags, effective 2013

Rarely do I see any progressive movement from my City of Toronto municipal government. Rob Ford, elected mayor during the last election, had promised to clean up city hall, but all we have seen so far has been further politiking and delays in large infrastructure, such as the Sheppard subway. Yesterday Ford proposed a motion to stop the $0.05 charge on plastic bags from retailers, but council turned the proposal around and banned all plastic bags, effective Jan 01 2013. Quick and efficient, yes, and I approve, but what happened to due process?

For the record I have never used plastic bags from any of my big box grocers for about a year before the plastic bag surcharge. My local grocers provide cardboard boxes and I use them. I also use cloth bags. Plastic bags are a hazard to the environment and wildlife, and spreads bits of plastic randomly around neighbourhood. Plastic bags shred and get caught in tree tops and in bushes. I also saw this environmental blight when I was in China. Overall I believe that mankind cannot properly control their use of plastic bags. The three year plastic bag surcharge here in Toronto has severely curtailed random plastic trash floating around my neighbourhood, which looks neater as a result. This surcharge has only been beneficial for our environment and for my neighbourhood.

That being said we do get plastic bags from our local Chinese grocery store. We buy very little of our groceries from here, maybe only 3 bags per week. These plastic bags are reused for garbage. Nothing is wasted.

Odd, is how the Ford administration governs. It is obvious that Ford has little control and even less support at Toronto City Hall, but this is not all that bad. While I wanted David Miller, Toronto’s past mayor, to ban plastic bags, he was never able to gather enough support and in the end failed. Essentially Toronto city council works without a mayor, and in this case was pretty effective. Maybe Toronto needs less bogged down democratic red tape and process and more proactive movement. We elected councilors and they have decided amongst themselves. In this case this was sufficient for me.

It seems counter-intuitive that Toronto would run better without a leader but this is how life unfolded. If council is still effective, then maybe this is Ok. What is lacking here is much semblance of long-term planning, but maybe Mayor Ford is not able to do this anyway. Still, to have a Mayor so incense the rest of city council that they galvanze and unify themselves against him is quite remarkable. Could it be that the common element amongst disparate councilors is their single minded disagreement with the Major’s views?

Reference: Mayor Rob Ford asks council to scrap plastic bag fee; council instead scraps plastic bags
Toronto’s ‘ludicrous’ plastic bag ban was a rush move

Addendum June 08 2012: Toronto plastic bag ban: Can the city actually do this?

Some stores will give away paper bags — but many big chains will probably only offer reusable bags for sale. Loblaw has gone “bagless” at eight Canadian stores, including one in Milton, where customers can buy bins or reusable bags.

“Reusable bags are something that many of our members offer in their stores right now, and I think that you would see a migration towards options such as that,” said Retail Council of Canada senior vice-president David Wilkes.

Jenny Hughes, owner of Me+You custom re-useable bags, Vancouver. I am not that upset over plastic bags!

2018 Jul 11 The best defence against plastic pollution that Catherine McKenna will hate

Mikko Paunio, a Finnish doctor and adjunct professor at the University of Helsenki, has some advice. In a recent paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Paunio dismisses the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra embedded in the Ocean Plastics Charter.

The charter, in self-important sustainability jargon, calls for “100 per cent reusable, recyclable or, where viable alternatives do not exist, recoverable, plastics by 2030”— objectives that Paunio describes as “the mirage of a circular economy.”

His solution for plastic waste? Burn it.