Nova Scotia’s Environment Minister, Gordon Wilson, introduced legislation on the opening day of the fall session of the provincial legislature that would implement a ban on single-use plastic bags in a year’s time. The delay will allow retailers and consumers time to adjust. “It’s going to change the way that we go to grocery stores; it’s going to have people thinking differently about plastics,” Wilson said at Province House after the bill was introduced. “So I’m very excited about this as an opportunity for us to move forward.”
Even retailers accepted that the move was probably inevitable given current public sentiment. “We understand that everybody has an environmental footprint,” Jim Cormier of the Retail Council of Canada told reporters. “Our members do as well and we’re working to ensure that we reduce that footprint.”