The report, completed by consulting firms Deloitte and ChemInfo Services, was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada to guide its plan to cut the country’s plastics waste to zero.
It found the plastics-manufacturing industry is a significant economic driver in Canada, worth $35 billion in sales of resins and plastic manufactured goods in 2017, and supporting about 93,000 jobs across more than 1,900 companies.
By comparison, there were fewer than a dozen recycling companies, employing about 500 people and generating about $350 million in revenue.
In 2016, 3.3 million tonnes of plastic ended up in the trash, 12 times the amount of plastic that was recycled. A small amount of plastics are burned for energy at five Canadian waste-to-energy plants. Almost 90 per cent of the plastic that is recycled in Canada is from packaging.
Generally, the analysis says, it is cheaper and easier to produce new plastic, use it and then throw it away than it is to recycle, reuse or repair it. The voluntary standards for contents of plastic products, and additives like glues and labels, mean there is a lack of consistency in the plastic materials available for recycling. That in turn makes them more expensive to recycle.
Canada also has very little demand for recycled plastic, which is why so much plastic has been shipped overseas. But the markets for recycled plastic are falling apart all over the world, leading shipments of Canadian plastics to be dumped in landfills or burn piles on foreign soil as well.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says Canada is throwing out billions of dollars of plastic every year and is working on a plan to have Canadians reuse or recycle all plastics or burn them for energy within 20 years. That plan is supposed to be unveiled this month.
“We’re literally throwing in the garbage, $120 (billion) to $150 billion in value,” she said last week. “We can do a lot better.”