Northwestern Ontario municipalities to study own ways of reducing plastic garbage

Mayors, reeves and councillors of over a dozen municipalities in northwestern Ontario say even though the federal government intends to ban single-use plastics starting at least in 2021, they're committed to coming up with their own solutions to try and curb the amount of garbage that ends up in local landfills.

Reducing plastic waste was a front-and-centre topic at a meeting of the Thunder Bay District Municipal League on June 8 in Dorion, Ont., about 80 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. The talks happened before Ottawa announced its intention to ban single-use plastics like, potentially, bags, straws and cutlery, on Monday.

"We're looking at the impact that plastics [have] in our community, not only in the aesthetics of our communities, but also the environmental impact," said Rick Dumas, the president of the Thunder Bay District Municipal League and mayor of Marathon.

"So we discussed around that and how we could go forward and have our communities look at, maybe, removal or reduction or some sort of a program put in place through the vendors."

Vendors, he said, are businesses like grocery stores or convenience stores.

The plan, he said, is for community leaders of the league's 17 member municipalities to return at the annual general meeting in the fall with more information and speakers on the subject; those, Dumas said, could include representatives from federal and provincial environmental agencies, the plastics industry and other stakeholders.

"There's got to be programs that we can put in place to make people aware of the impact of these single-use plastic bags," he said. "We're looking at, how can we remove these things from the stream and get people considering other alternatives when they go to the grocery stores or to the convenience stores to pick up their products."

"There's many, many options out there."

Some ideas initially presented include working with businesses to make it less attractive for people to use plastic bags at the store — such as lobbying to increase the cost people would pay for each bag, Dumas said.

"Each community might be a little different," he said.

But getting something in place soon is essential to, not only keeping municipalities clean and neat, but also to protect the environment, adding that expansion of existing landfills or creating new ones is time-consuming and costly for small communities.

"The environmental impact [plastic] has, on the wildlife within our region, we live in the bush, so we're going to see those impacts with birds and small animals that get tangled up in these bags and plastics," Dumas said. "And as we know with all the particles that are going into our waterways and Lake Superior ... the impact that it has on our Great Lakes as well."

Dealing with the plastic problem will ensure there's "less of an impact on our environment, not only for us but for our kids and our grandkids."