Vancouver Bans Single Use Plastic Bags On January 1, 2022

[DonLever]

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-plastic-bag-ban-single-use-items-policy-2022

 

Starting on New Year’s Day, Vancouverites are being forced by their municipal government to change their habits when it comes to using plastic bags and single-use cups.

All businesses, including retailers and restaurants, will no longer be able to provide customers with single-use plastic shopping bags.

While businesses will be able to offer customers with alternatives to plastic shopping bags, they are required to charge minimum fees of $0.15 for a paper shopping bag, and $1.00 for a new reusable shopping bag.

Coffee and tea drinks, mainly consumed with single-use cups, will also cost more. The municipal government is requiring businesses to charge a minimum fee of $0.25 for each single-use cup. The policy is intended to encourage customers to bring a reusable cup, with the city asserting this can be a safe practice during the pandemic.

However, the various new fees are not a new tax; the municipal government is providing businesses with the ability to keep the revenues to cover the cost of required software updates and staff training to meet their new annual reporting requirement on the number of single-use items they provide to customers, which is now part of the business license renewal process each year. This is also intended to allow businesses to invest in reusable alternatives.

These new policies were originally scheduled to go into effect at the start of 2021, but they were delayed due to the impacts to local businesses from COVID-19.

In 2020, the municipal government put in place new policies that limit single-use items for plastic straws, utensils, and styrofoam containers.

The municipal government claims over 82 million single-use cups and 89 million plastic shopping bags were thrown in the garbage in Vancouver in 2018. According to the city, the collection of single-use items from city-operated garbage bins and the pick-up of litter from streets and public spaces costs the municipal government about $2.5 million annually.

[bishopshodan]

There was one point where they didn't want re-usable bags etc... due to covid concerns. I guess the understanding of the virus has changed.

 

They could have waited a bit on this.

[Roger Neilsons Towel]

Any reduction in plastic shopping bags in the environment is a good thing. We were much better off when people used paper bags for everything. 

[Gurn]

Most places I go have replaced the plastic bag with the vegetable oil bag anyway-; and still charge for those as well.

[Alflives]

Okay, do our plastic bags go from bringing home the groceries to used as a kitchen garbage bag.  I think a lot of people do the same, because the grocery garbage bags fit nicely into a kitchen/bathroom garbage can.  Really, who just throws out their plastic grocery bag?  Very few, right?  These bags are already more than single use.  

So now we will all buy plastic kitchen garbage bags.  Same number of plastic bags will be used.  Why not just gonto paper bags and have those bags made at our local paper mills?  Then st least we are helping the local economy.  

[Alflives]

2 minutes ago, gurn said:

Most places I go have replaced the plastic bag with the vegetable oil bag anyway-; and still charge for those as well.

Are those bio bags?  How long before they get nasty?  

[Gurn]

4 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Are those bio bags?  How long before they get nasty?  

Good question.

[Alflives]

8 minutes ago, Roger Neilsons Towel said:

Any reduction in plastic shopping bags in the environment is a good thing. We were much better off when people used paper bags for everything. 

Just ask the paper mill in Powell River. 

[Alflives]

Just now, gurn said:

Good question.

They sound ideal.  Get groceries, and then the bag goes in the kitchen and bathroom garbage cans.  Then they collect garbage and go to the dump where they decompose 100%.  That’s a win all around, no?  Paper works too, of course.  

[bishopshodan]

26 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Okay, do our plastic bags go from bringing home the groceries to used as a kitchen garbage bag.  I think a lot of people do the same, because the grocery garbage bags fit nicely into a kitchen/bathroom garbage can.  Really, who just throws out their plastic grocery bag?  Very few, right?  These bags are already more than single use.  

So now we will all buy plastic kitchen garbage bags.  Same number of plastic bags will be used.  Why not just gonto paper bags and have those bags made at our local paper mills?  Then st least we are helping the local economy.  

Yep,

I remember hearing this being an issue in places that have tried it.

 

Micro plastics might be the most underrated threat to the planet. However we have to make sure we are doing things that make sense.

 

In the meantime, can we require stores and shops use 100% biodegradable ones? I used to order them when I ran the liquor stores. Cost more, but I'm a good guy. 
I don't know the science and numbers enough on it. Are the 100% bio ones, still bad for the planet? would they be a half way step? 

 

You make a good point. what do we use for our kitchen trash?....we'll have to buy something, paper wont cut it.

[bishopshodan]

34 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Are those bio bags?  How long before they get nasty?  

the ones I had in the shops lasted a couple years

 

Edit: haha, I was typing while you guys were having these good questions that I was also thinking. 

Edited January 1, 2022 by bishopshodan

[-AJ-]

Been stockpiling these bags as I used them for garbage bags.

 

Once I can't get anymore, I'll have to start buying garbage bags...made of plastic.

[4petesake]

My life just got more complicated when the wife forgets to bring her reusable shopping bags.

 

 

[-DLC-]

46 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Okay, do our plastic bags go from bringing home the groceries to used as a kitchen garbage bag.  I think a lot of people do the same, because the grocery garbage bags fit nicely into a kitchen/bathroom garbage can.  Really, who just throws out their plastic grocery bag?  Very few, right?  These bags are already more than single use.  

So now we will all buy plastic kitchen garbage bags.  Same number of plastic bags will be used.  Why not just gonto paper bags and have those bags made at our local paper mills?  Then st least we are helping the local economy.  

It's how I do it, Alf.  I don't buy garbage bags because I reuse shopping bags like you do and so now I will be forced to buy...garbage bags.  Seems a little pointless to me.

[JM_]

59 minutes ago, Roger Neilsons Towel said:

Any reduction in plastic shopping bags in the environment is a good thing. We were much better off when people used paper bags for everything. 

it is, but telling us its not a tax is kind of insulting. Its a tax.

[drummer4now]

IMO these counter measures are a little too late…the environment is already showing signs of decay and damage. 

 

We should have never used plastic in the first place or the very least stop like decades ago…

 

I always laugh at the illusion of living in the western world; nice clean suburbs and streets and when In reality it is not really like that. 

Just my two cents…

 

 

 

[Russ]

2 hours ago, DonLever said:

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-plastic-bag-ban-single-use-items-policy-2022

 

Starting on New Year’s Day, Vancouverites are being forced by their municipal government to change their habits when it comes to using plastic bags and single-use cups.

All businesses, including retailers and restaurants, will no longer be able to provide customers with single-use plastic shopping bags.

While businesses will be able to offer customers with alternatives to plastic shopping bags, they are required to charge minimum fees of $0.15 for a paper shopping bag, and $1.00 for a new reusable shopping bag.

Coffee and tea drinks, mainly consumed with single-use cups, will also cost more. The municipal government is requiring businesses to charge a minimum fee of $0.25 for each single-use cup. The policy is intended to encourage customers to bring a reusable cup, with the city asserting this can be a safe practice during the pandemic.

However, the various new fees are not a new tax; the municipal government is providing businesses with the ability to keep the revenues to cover the cost of required software updates and staff training to meet their new annual reporting requirement on the number of single-use items they provide to customers, which is now part of the business license renewal process each year. This is also intended to allow businesses to invest in reusable alternatives.

These new policies were originally scheduled to go into effect at the start of 2021, but they were delayed due to the impacts to local businesses from COVID-19.

In 2020, the municipal government put in place new policies that limit single-use items for plastic straws, utensils, and styrofoam containers.

The municipal government claims over 82 million single-use cups and 89 million plastic shopping bags were thrown in the garbage in Vancouver in 2018. According to the city, the collection of single-use items from city-operated garbage bins and the pick-up of litter from streets and public spaces costs the municipal government about $2.5 million annually.

With all the bitching about covid spreading I am pretty sure Tim Hortons/McDonalds/corner store have no interest in me bringing in my own Yeti tumbler... But if I must to save the 25 cents they better not complain that I am using it around their coffee pots.  Is the city going to mandate that you can't discriminate reusable cups now?

 

1 hour ago, -DLC- said:

It's how I do it, Alf.  I don't buy garbage bags because I reuse shopping bags like you do and so now I will be forced to buy...garbage bags.  Seems a little pointless to me.

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/frank-small-white-garbage-bags-25-l-200-pk-1424608p.html#srp

 

Yup just gonna end up getting these onece I run out of my stash.... 

Edited January 1, 2022 by Russ

[Kurgom]

Sales of plastic garbage bags go up, production goes up, in the end there's barely any real different. Plastic is so ingrained in modern life people don't really understand how hard it is to make meaningful changes to our plastic waste. Feel good change that wont amount to much. Even the plastic straw ban did more than this, much more.

Edited January 1, 2022 by Kurgom

[24K PureCool]

So we are charged a 25c tax whenever we go buy a drink. Smart real smart.

Work fine for coffee with personal tumblers but not much else like bubble tea or sodas.

 

This is stupid. Should have been mandatory bio-degradable plastic bags and cups instead of effectively adding a new tax to consumers in an already high inflation era. At least the extra cost of going bio-degradable actually help the environment a little bit.

Edited January 1, 2022 by 24K PureCool

[StanleyCupOneDay]

2 hours ago, bishopshodan said:

Yep,

I remember hearing this being an issue in places that have tried it.

 

Micro plastics might be the most underrated threat to the planet. However we have to make sure we are doing things that make sense.

 

In the meantime, can we require stores and shops use 100% biodegradable ones? I used to order them when I ran the liquor stores. Cost more, but I'm a good guy. 
I don't know the science and numbers enough on it. Are the 100% bio ones, still bad for the planet? would they be a half way step? 

 

You make a good point. what do we use for our kitchen trash?....we'll have to buy something, paper wont cut it.

I use compostable trash bags. They’re available for purchase at most grocery stores. Been doing that for years now. I’m also pretty sure that some recycling places are taking soft plastics like shopping bags in BC.

Edited January 1, 2022 by StanleyCupOneDay