What Are the Worst Single Use Waste Products We Could Reduce or Ban in Canada – see here!

Single use waste might be one of the most obvious threats to eco-friendly waste management and recycling strategies in Canada. ‘Single use’ is defined as any product that is used once and then disregarded as waste, with no value to the product. There are a number of single use materials provided to consumers that continue to damage our environment.

Green cities like Toronto have been in discussion about banning certain single use items and corporations like grocery stores continue to play their part in reducing the presence of single use materials. Are we doing enough though – with alternatives readily available, many environmentalists would say no.

Plastic straws

Plastic straws aren’t accepted in municipal recycling programs. In Canada, roughly 57 million straws are used every day. This single-use plastic is unnecessary. These days, you can be paper straws which are more eco-friendly than their plastic counterpart. Alternatively, there are also reusable straws you can enjoy whenever you like.

Ziploc bags

Yes, Ziploc bags and similar plastic sandwich bags are single-use and non-recyclable. In fact, they’re similar to plastic grocery bags or shopping bags. Unfortunately, these are very popular. The average Canadian family is believed to use about 500 Ziplocs per year. It’s unclear how reduction strategies could be employed with a population fixated on using Ziplocs so often.

Coffee cups

Coffee cups and their lids have an oil-based polyethylene plastic lining inside. This lining does not separate well from the paper shell. This ultimately creates a product that is not really recyclable. In Toronto alone, we throw away 1 million disposable coffee cups a day. This is really bad news! Recycling plants don’t have the means of processing these which means a serious conversation needs to be had with coffee suppliers, such as Starbucks and Tim Hortons.

Plastic cutlery

If you’re having a celebration or a party and you don’t want to have much of a mess to clean afterwards, a lot of people will go to their nearest store and pick up some single-use disposable cutlery and plates. The cutlery is made from plastic. These are also included in fast food takeout orders. As you’ve probably guessed, this type of plastic cutlery is all landfill-bound and will take decades to decompose.

Plastic plates

We sometimes purchase plastic plates thinking they are recyclable but it is important to know these oftentimes still end up landfills. Even some recycling machines will recognize plastic plates as paper and sort them accordingly, creating cross-contamination that can’t be saved. Manufacturers are in the beginning stages of switching to similar single-use eco-friendly plates made from materials like palm leaves, bamboo, paper, and sugarcane. These are still in development stages though.

Plastic wrap

Plastic wrap such as the type you would use to wrap a sandwich is non-recyclable. Also known as ‘cling wrap’, the world would be far better off not having any plastic wrap in it. As with other plastics, the chemicals and resins added into plastic wrap make it too hard to recycle. The alternatives that exist include wax paper and beeswax paper, both organic, although these aren’t used with regularity here in Canada.

Plastic takeout containers

When we end up full at a restaurant and want to take the rest of our meal home, we’re given plastic takeout containers. These are meant for single-use. This type of disposable packaging is among a large category of packaging which is manufactured at a rate of $25.3 billion per year. The problem of plastic takeout containers can resolve itself by the customer bringing their own containers or alternatively, a restaurant providing recyclable containers. This has yet to happen, in any big numbers.

Single-use plastic rings

We aren’t talking about diamond rings here. These are plastic rings usually in the form of 6 together, applied around plastic bottles to keep them together. Thankfully, reusable plastic rings have been developed however they aren’t in use by every beverage company. As with other plastics which aren’t biodegradable or recyclable, these rings end up in our natural environment usually eaten by birds or sea mammals and cause a lot of harm.

Plastic shopping bags

Grocery bags and shopping bags made from plastic are very damaging to our environment. They’re difficult to sort, are single-use of course, and the plastic themselves is filled with toxic chemicals. In an effort to reduce consumption, some cities have discussed a permanent ban across these plastics. More than 15 billion of these are thrown out every year and in an age of increasing pressure from environmental activists, it would be a simple change to move from damaging single-use plastics like this.

Plastic water bottles

A lot of plastic bottles for water, Coca-Cola, and other beverages are recyclable. Unfortunately they don’t always end up in recycling. In fact, a recent study found roughly half of all plastic bottles end up in landfills regardless of whether they are made from recyclable materials or not. Yearly, that’s about 65 million wasted bottles. As they degrade, toxic fumes are released. Single-use plastic water bottles are anti-environment, despite their popularity.

Styrofoam

Styrofoam is a material used in packaging a wide array of different products, from food to electronics. Styrofoam, although convenient, in actuality is a horrible material. It takes up to 500 years for it to breakdown, is damaging to our ecology, and more than 14 million tonnes of it is consumed every year. It’s also believed to be a carcinogenic. Arguably more than plastics, Styrofoam is the most problematic single-use waste product in the world.

Food wrappers

Unless it’s paper, you will find a lot of food wrappers are unfortunately not very eco-friendly. In some cases, it’s unavoidable that these wrappers are used. In others though, there may be alternatives. A lot of food packaging manufacturers continue to explore using recyclable materials. This continues to be mainly exploratory however and hasn’t really sufficed to any significant action.

Single-use waste products may not necessarily have to be banned but there’s no questioning we’ve got to do more as a city and country to reduce their use wherever possible. Do we need all of these single-use materials – not in every case. There are opportunities to use more eco-friendly alternatives. As a top waste disposal service in Toronto and the GTA, Core Mini Bins puts a lot of support behind a future of reusing, reducing, and recycling.