The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) will ban a number of single-use and food service plastics in December in order to slow the proliferation of plastic waste and to remove more hard-to-recycle plastics from recycling streams.
The new regulation will ban all single-use plastic film shopping bags, oxo-degradable and biodegradable plastics, single-use plastic food utensils, and food service packaging made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and expanded polystyrene (EPS).
BC consumers will have to bring their own reusable shopping bags to the grocery store, or purchase paper bags for a fee. British Columbia is the third-largest Canadian province, with a population of 5mn as of 2021.
Single-use plastics, especially EPS and shopping bags, have come under scrutiny in recent years due the ballooning amount of plastic waste they create.
While a number of Canadian recycling firms are capable of handling PS and high-impact PS, including Polystyvert and Dacol Plastics, none are based in British Columbia.
New rules and regulations against the use of PS and EPS have been spreading in various municipalities over recent years. Some PS converters have pushed back on the banning of EPS, stating it is more energy efficient to make than regular PS or comparative plastics.
While PS demand remains weak and below year-prior levels in consumption, some market participants have a more positive outlook on the second half of 2023. One distributor expects upcoming projects in the fourth quarter to help strengthen demand. However, producers are still with high inventories from scarce demand in recent months.
PVC plastics are a significant contaminant for recycled plastics streams, as its chlorine-based chemicals can cause damage to machinery and can destroy the value of other plastics if it is recycled alongside them.
While bans of single-use plastics have been proposed and implemented in other US states and Canadian provinces, the impact to PVC demand has been minimal compared to consumer-oriented plastics like PS.
PVC is more commonly used for home construction and infrastructure purposes, with even more consumer-facing products being more geared to home interior products, medical devices, or coatings automobiles and other products, as opposed to single-use and food-packaging products.
PVC and the process needed to make it have come under greater scrutiny in recent years as environmental groups file various complaints to prevent the expansion of PVC production and utilization in US industry.
The flow of money from the US federal government under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has positioned PVC to be more heavily utilized for drinking water and sewage pipes, something environmental groups oppose due to the chlorinated nature of PVC pipe.
The explosion of a train laden with vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), the immediate precursor to PVC, in New Palestine, Ohio, has also drawn scrutiny towards the PVC production process and its hazards. PVC producers have not noticed a significant loss of business to other commodity alternatives in relation to any complaints or protests.
