Environment and Climate Change Canada

In a letter to Ms. Catherine McKenna, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, several leading Canadian and Global environmental organizations, are calling on Canada to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment -- a 1995 pact known as the Ban Amendment which would amend the Basel Convention to require developed countries to cease exporting hazardous and other wastes to developing countries for any reason. Canada has ratified the Basel Convention but not the Amendment.

Plastic pollution is a global challenge that requires immediate action. Plastic waste ends up in our landfills and incinerators, litters our parks and beaches, and pollutes our rivers, lakes, and oceans, entangling and killing turtles, fish, and marine mammals.

Twelve leading ocean conservancy and environmental groups have requested that Canada's environment and health ministers take immediate regulatory action on plastic waste and pollution, under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1999,and call on the Government of Canada to add any plastic generated as a waste, or discharged from the use or disposal of products or packaging, to the Schedule 1 List of Toxic Substances under CEPA. 

Metro Vancouver will securely dispose of approximately 1,500 tonnes of repatriated Canadian waste, shipped back from the Philippines, at its Waste-to-Energy Facility in Burnaby.

The government of Canada is working with Canadians across the country to protect its land and water from plastic waste. Not only is plastic pollution harmful to the environment, but the disposal of plastics is a waste of a valuable resource. This is why the Government of Canada is partnering with Canadian businesses to develop innovative solutions to keep plastics in the economy and out of landfills and the environment.