More than two million plastic bags, 2.6 million paper coffee cups, and countless foam takeout food containers are thrown out each week in Vancouver. “It kind of takes your breath away,” Coun. Andrea Reimer said of the figures, which appear in an administrative report that council will consider at a meeting on Tuesday. “You don’t realize how much that adds up.”
As part of its push to become the greenest city in the world, Vancouver is looking at ways to reduce the number of single-use items that end up in landfills. In 2011, the city set a goal of reducing the amount of solid waste by 50 per cent from 2008 levels by the year 2020. The most recent data, from 2015, shows that total waste has decreased by 27 per cent, or 129,000 tonnes, since 2008. The city is also planning to become a zero-waste community by 2040.
In February 2016, council directed city staff to begin reviewing regulatory options for addressing distribution, use and recycling of single-use items to help it meet its goals.
The city is considering everything, including fees, deposits, bans on distribution and use, disposal bans, mandatory in-store recycling, reuse programs (such as mug shares) and education.
Reimer said bans won’t work for every item. For instance, many places that banned plastic shopping bags didn’t see a reduction in the number of bags in landfills. “Very few people use them once,” she said, noting that 63 per cent of plastic bags disposed of in Vancouver have been reused as trash bags.
Disposable cups, lids and sleeves make up 22 per cent of large litter items and are one of the most commonly items found on Vancouver streets. Disposable cups and containers make up almost 50 per cent by volume of the material collected in street trash cans, costing taxpayers about $2.5 million per year to collect.
A ban on paper coffee cups could be difficult to implement because it’s not feasible for everyone to carry a reusable mug, although a MugShare program operates at UBC for travel mugs, and the Binners’ Project has advocated for a five-cent refund on coffee cups.
Chris Hannah, director of operations for Trees Organic Coffee & Roasting House, said about 50 per cent of Trees beverages are taken out of the store. Those who are drinking in-house are given ceramic mugs unless they ask for a disposable cup. Customers with their own mugs are given a 10-cent discount.
Hannah suggested that if the city is planning to reduce the number of disposable cups going in the trash, there should be more disposal options. The city has been piloting on-street recycling for disposable cups, non-foam takeout containers, and paper bags in select locations in Vancouver since last year. “The city is kind of on the right track thinking about how can we reduce our waste in the landfills, but we don’t want to jump the gun and say let’s ban coffee cups,” he said.
Reimer said polystyrene foam food containers are an obvious target for a ban. More than 100 U.S. cities, including Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, have banned their use by restaurants, food vendors, grocers and other retailers.
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