Commentary
Eco-warriors neither slumber nor sleep in their pursuit of universal sustainability. Plastic looms large on their enemies list because of its non-biodegradability. Three years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised his government would phase out the production and use of hard-to-recycle plastic items, with the goal of zero plastic waste by 1930.
Thus, on June 20, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault issued “a comprehensive plan to ban harmful single-use plastics and keep them out of the environment,” to become effective in December. On the to-be-banned list of plastic materials: checkout bags; cutlery; food-service ware; ring carriers; stir sticks; and—with disability exemptions—flexible straws, which will be sold from behind the counter, in the apparent belief, as my colleague John Robson wryly observed, “that we’ll be too stupid to discover their existence. As with cigarettes.”…