By the end of this year, Canadian companies will be banned from importing and manufacturing plastic bags, straws, stir sticks, and other single-use plastics.
Sale of the items will be prohibited one year later and exporting them won't be allowed by the end of 2025.
The dates for the end of single-use plastics in the country were outlined by Steven Guilbeault, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, on Monday. In his final regulations to prohibit single-use plastics, Guilbeault allowed for the one year gap between manufacturing/importing and the sale of the items in order to allow businesses enough time to transition and to deplete their existing stock.
"After that, businesses will begin offering the sustainable solutions Canadians want, whether that's paper straws or reusable bags. With these new regulations, we're taking a historic step forward in reducing plastic pollution, and keeping our communities and the places we love clean," Guilbeault said.
The ban on export of the plastics makes Canada the first among peer jurisdictions to do so internationally, Guilbeault added. An initial draft of the legislation made no mention of exports, outraging environment advocates who saw it as a loophole for Canadian business to continue to ship the items abroad.
The ban includes checkout bags, cutlery, takeout containers, ring carriers used to hold cans and bottles, stir sticks, and straws. Some flexible plastic straws will still be allowed in order to accommodate people with disabilities.
Canada estimates the ban on the hard-to-recycle plastics will eliminate more than 1.3 million tonnes of waste and more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution over the next decade.
Approximately, 15 billion plastic grocery bags are used every year and 16 million straws are used daily across Canada.
Oceana Canada, an advocacy group dedicated to ocean conservation that was established in 2015, applauded the move by Canada.
"This victory means that billions of plastic items each year that otherwise could have threatened sea life like whales and turtles will no longer be adding to the global plastic disaster,” said Anthony Merante, the group's plastics campaigner. “We will continue working with Canadians and the government to ensure more unnecessary single-use plastics are added to the list of banned items moving forward.”
More than 160,000 Canadians have signed Oceana Canada’s petition calling on the federal government to enact a strong ban on single-use plastics.