Earlier this month, the Canadian government announced plans to ban single-use plastics by 2021 at
the earliest. The Federal government is introducing this ban in the
wake of news that the Philippines is returning 61 shipping
containers full of contaminated recyclable waste to Canada. Also,
the ban comes less than a week after a study out of the University of Victoria found
humans are unknowingly consuming up to 120,000 particles of
microplastics each year.
Once admired as a product of human ingenuity, spawning such
slogans as "better living through chemistry," in recent
years plastics have increasingly become synonymous with
environmental degradation and pollution. A 2015 study found that 8 million tons of
plastic garbage is dumped into the ocean each year, and as the use
of plastics for consumer products becomes increasingly dominant,
that number is set to rise to 155 million tons by 2025 if present
garbage management practices remain. Globally, 91% of plastics are
