ECCC What We Heard Report – Symposium and Policy Dialogue on Reuse in Canada

Last fall, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) held a Symposium and Policy Dialogue on Reuse with a range of stakeholders including representatives from municipal and provincial governments, the recycling and waste management sector, academia and think tanks, environmental activists, industry associations, retailers and manufacturers. ECCC has now shared their What We Heard Report from the reuse sessions along with a French version.

RCC participated in all sessions and played an active role on behalf of retailers and quick service restaurants encouraging further research to leverage successful reuse models in other jurisdictions while noting that reuse initiatives should demonstrate evidence of positive environmental, health and economic impacts.

At this stage, we know that the federal government is only considering voluntary measures to support the development of reuse initiatives, like funding mechanisms. However, we suspect federal regulatory measures are an increasing possibility in the years to come given Europe’s draft packaging law laid out minimum targets for packaging reuse, such as 20% of take-away cups by 2030 and 80% by 2040 and respectively, 10% and 50% for packaging used to deliver online purchases.

RCC will continue to engage with government on reuse while also participating in working groups, such as the Canada Plastics Pact’s new reuse working group which intends to further research, explore and implement scalable reuse solutions with the support of cross-industry stakeholders.

ECCC will be joining RCC’s Plastics Committee meeting on March 27^th to share insights from the report along with any financial incentives they are exploring to support the development of reuse platforms.