LUNENBURG, N.S. — A group in Lunenburg is hoping to gain some traction with town council next month in its quest to get rid of single-use plastics in the municipality.
Jennifer Constable with Plastic Free Lunenburg said the plastic ban topic is on the agenda for council’s meeting on June 11.
Constable said she hopes a strong show of support at the meeting will get the ball rolling at the council level.
“Although we’re bringing it to them, we worked with them to create it,” she said.
The proposal includes a ban on the sale and distribution of seven categories of single-use plastics: checkout bags; straws; bulk goods and produce bags; cutlery; ready-to-eat food and beverage cups, containers and lids; single serving condiment packets; and single serving beverage bottles.
If adopted, the ban would be the most comprehensive in the country, Constable said.
“We’re asking them to continue the process of having it go to public consultation, first reading ... it would still be another six or eight weeks before it came to a final vote on whether it becomes a bylaw or not.”
She said the group got started partly out of peoples’ desire to be good citizens of the world, “and also just seeing the huge impact it is having on our community as far as litter and waste management.”
That’s especially the case in the summer during tourist season, she said, because visitors aren’t separating their waste.
“We saw that its something that’s quite easy to regulate, in that if you don’t have those items people can’t litter ... because they’re not getting them.”
-Jennifer Constable
“We saw that its something that’s quite easy to regulate, in that if you don’t have those items people can’t litter ... because they’re not getting them.”
She said some businesses and people in the town have voluntarily removed plastics, “but that’s a pretty ineffective way of making change because it doesn’t really affect anything.”
She saod a wide change takes the onus off the consumer to make decisions about plastic use by removing the need for a decision altogether.
The group held public meetings in January and February that brought out 300 local residents, with 97 per cent in support of a comprehensive ban by next January, if not sooner.
Constable said many local businesses are already moving away from the plastics on their own, but smaller ones say a bylaw would be a good idea because it would be easier if everyone was doing it at the same time.
“If you ever walk around and pick up garbage on the side of the road, the two biggest things you’re going to find are plastic bottles and coffee cups.”
She said as expected, the businesses that are most nervous are the larger ones that are parts of chains.
The City of Victoria and some other Canadian municipalities have banned — or are working toward bans — on plastic bags, Styrofoam and other single-use plastics.
The provincial government has said it won’t consider a provincial ban on plastic bags, saying that the decision is up to municipalities. Halifax and other municipalities have expressed support for the idea, and in January, Halifax regional council told staff to draft a bylaw by the end of this year.
That motion also told staff to confer with 10 of the largest municipalities in the province.
Lunenburg mayor Rachel Bailey was unavailable Monday afternoon.
