 Hello, welcome. Hi. I'm Lynn Brockington, Community Experience Coordinator at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. So welcome to tonight's webinar. This webinar is part of Climate Future initiative that invites the community to come together and to deepen knowledge and take action around the climate crisis. And before we get started, I just want to acknowledge that we're doing this webinar on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nations, Swaylatuth Nation and Musqueam Nation. We recognize and respect them as nations in this territory, as well as their historic connection to the land and waters around them since time in Memorial. And certainly before they were single use plastics. So, we're doing this webinar tonight with a local organization called For Our Kids. Actually, I should say the local chapter of For Our Kids. For Our Kids is a network of grandparents and parents across Canada taking action on climate change. We're very happy tonight to be coordinating this program with the local chapter, the North Shore chapter of For Our Kids. So I'd just like to ask Lynn to come on and tell us a little bit more about that group. Hi. Hi, Lynn. Thank you. Thank you for having me and having the For Our Kids North Shore chapter. Very quickly, who are we, Lynn, gave a bit of an introduction. Each chapter is run locally and very much by volunteers doing taking actions on topics that they feel are very relevant and helpful for their regions in order to address climate change. So we've taken actions on a number of issues, doing so with a meeting with our MLAs, publishing op-eds. We've been painting banners, softening formal government submissions, and running speaker series. So this midi expert is a series that we offer on a monthly basis to help people learn about environmental topics, to connect with local experts. And most importantly, to help them understand what they could do themselves. And I'll do a plug for the next session, actually, if you want to mark your calendars. That is on June 22nd. We will have Ocean Ambassadors Canada coming with us. So that should be another exciting session next to today's session. I'll put later on our details in the chat if you want to stay in touch with us or have any questions for For Our Kids. But with that, I'll keep it very short. Karen has great stories to tell us. And I'd like to pass it over to Karen to then get started with reduction of single use items. Great. Thank you so much, Celine. Karen, I'll just say a few words about who you are before we get going. And I'm also going to put up a poll just so that we can get an accurate attendance number. So Karen is a senior engineer with solid waste services at Metro Vancouver. And she has worked on various waste reduction and recycling projects over the past 10 plus years from feasibility studies on turning wood waste into particle board to implementing recycling programs in regional parks. As the lead for the region single use item reduction work, it is Karen's job to research how we can reduce plastic waste through circular economy programs, policies and business practices. So thank you so much, Karen, for taking some time tonight to join us. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm honored to be here. And whenever somebody wants to talk about waste and recycling with me, I'm always very excited. So if you have any questions, there will be questions at the end and I'm happy to answer all all related questions. And as you can see, I have worked with the park and this is a photo of when we worked with the parks on reducing waste. And one of the key challenges they still have is the number of coffee cups in the waste stream. And I'll just start a bit about myself before I get into the presentation. And, and I like many of you love the ocean growing up on the West Coast. I spent a lot of time in it as a kid as a swimmer, and I've recently taken up kiteboarding so I really love the water. And I just can't imagine a world where there's more plastic in the oceans than fish. And that's what researchers are concerned will happen by 2050 if we don't take action. So I'm really motivated by that. And, and for the, for the past 10 years, I've kind of dedicated my life towards reducing waste. And part of the reason is because I read a book called Cradle to Cradle. And it really solidified for me that the biggest problems we have are about consumption of materials and just to link it to climate. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation finds that 45% of the emissions globally are linked to the production of materials. And so this is something that I really got curious about. I thought, okay, we can solve the energy problem by switching to renewable sources of energy, but we really didn't have a clear path for how to manage all these materials that we consume on a daily basis. And so I'll spare you the details of the last 10 years of my work and cut to the chase. The summary is that we are part of a very complex system. And this means that we're all connected. And it means that the decisions we make every day not only affect ourselves, but they affect the planet and every living being on the planet. So what I do is try to make positive change towards reducing these materials by thinking about how we can change systems. And the first step I take, especially with single use items was to kind of understand the problem. So in 2018, for the first time, we looked at just how many of these items are being disposed. So this doesn't include items being recycled, but in 2018, 1.1 billion single use items were disposed in the region and we remeasured in 2020 and it's about the same around a billion items. The mix has changed due to the pandemic, but the number of items still remains quite high at 440 items per person. So as waste reduction experts, our goal is always to move up this triangle called the waste hierarchy. And we always try to move towards minimizing waste in the first place, as well as maximizing reuse. Recycling is important and recovering energy is important and responsibly disposing of waste is important. But the most powerful thing we can do is to minimize waste in the first place and to maximize reuse. And so that's where we'll focus today. And so that's definitely, this triangle is definitely the perspective of a solid waste management professional. But I think when we talk to people, what they told us as to why they want to reduce single use items and single use plastics is because they want to protect our oceans and they want to protect our marine life. And they've all seen this photo on the internet through their social media or however they get their information and they just really want to try to change this. And they're not the only ones. Many levels of government are recognizing that this is a challenge and that they need to take action. And so at the Canadian government level, so the federal government working on some regulatory measures to then single use plastics by the end of 2021, they will release what their plan is. So not sure when they'll implement those measures, but they plan to tell us what they will be by the end of this year. The province of BC is also working on measures to reduce single use items. They've increased the number of items that will be accepted in residential recycling by 2023. They've also worked to approve municipal bylaws. So you may have heard that some local jurisdictions like city of Vancouver have bylaws that are in place are pending to reduce single use items. And they're also working on looking at if they should do bands at a provincial level. And many of our members in the lower mainland and throughout and communities throughout BC have programs and policies in place to reduce single use items. And so as an employee of Metro Vancouver, I work for the regional government and we kind of provide a central role of coordination and support for all of our member communities. And so we've completed a toolkit. We do a lot of research and I'm going to I've presented some of our numbers, but I'm going to present more because I love research. And we continue to monitor how we're doing, provide education. And we also just got approval to work on bylaw standards. So there's been some concerns that every community has a different approach to reducing single use items. So we're going to be working with all the communities in our region to try to come up with a harmonized approach. So it's less confusing for citizens and businesses. When they go to be part of the solution and implement single use item reduction measures. So before I get into single use item reduction, I have to answer the question that everyone asked me, which is, well, why can't we just recycle everything? What's wrong with that? And, and definitely recycling is important and we should do it. But there's many challenges with recycling. And so firstly, I want to say you should always recycle and you should recycle with confidence in BC, because we have really great programs and a lot of our material is recycled. But for example, what I call plastic lined hot paper cups are unique to BC. So these switching, sorry, what I call plastic lined hot paper cups or what everyone else calls coffee cups are very commonly disposed. And while there is a recycling program for it, it's unique to BC. So these can be recycled in the local BC recycling program, but that's not common. They're very hard to recycle in most jurisdictions. So just swapping plastic out for paper causes other environmental challenges. And often people don't even realize that their paper cups are actually lined with plastic. And the other thing that they don't realize is that some of their paper wrappings that they get their food in actually have a coating on them that makes it grease proof. And so if you have an item in the grease and the water doesn't go through it, then it's likely that it either has a plastic coating, like the coffee cup, or it has a Oops, I messed up my slides. Or it has something called a PFAF coating, which everyone else thinks of is like the same coating you have on your nonstick pan or the same coating you have on your glide floss or the same coating that you have on say your waterproof jacket. And the problem with these coatings is that it makes it so they're very hard to compost because these are persistent synthetic chemicals which have been associated with various health concerns. And so for us as waste managers, it's very tricky for us to explain to people what can and cannot go in the compost bin, especially if it's paper based. So we just say if the grease and water doesn't go through it to be safe, put it in the garbage or if it can be put it in the recycling like for the coffee cups. And the similar challenges come with plastics and compostable plastics. I know some people have really focused on switching to compostable plastics, but they bring their own challenge. And the reason I'm sharing this slide is because many people don't realize that plastics labeled compostable can a both be fossil based so that's these types of bioplastics, they can be biobased so made from plants. And the same with conventional plastics so the landscapes of plastics out there is actually quite complex and makes it very possible that very complicated for us to manage and I'll get into some of the challenges with the bioplastics in a second but with the regular plastics is very interesting when you put them in your recycling bin. There's optical stores that identify what they are and put them into the correct bin and there's really good markets for most of them but if you put your bioplastics into the recycling bin. There's no recycling markets for that at that this time, even though they're technically recyclable. So the only thing that can go into the recycling is just the regular conventional plastics not the not the compostable plastic so you can put the plastics made from biomass that are chemically made into the same plastic as the as the fossil based ones but you can't put the ones that are labeled compostable or biodegradable in the recycling. So it can be quite complex to figure out even what to do with the plastics but if you have any questions we're here to help and so is RCBC so you can always call or email the RCBC hotline. So to make it less confusing we just kind of explain to people that you know when you're looking at where to put your compostable plastics they actually go in the garbage since they don't go in the recycling stream and as you can see on this slide they also don't go in the green bin and that's because Only very specific materials can be processed by our local composters and most of the plastics out there even if they're labeled biodegradable or compostable aren't easily composted by our local facilities and they end up getting a whole bunch of different ones can't tell which ones they are. And so sometimes they have to screen them out and send it all to the garbage because they're not sure what's what. So just for completeness I don't want to leave you to think like oh occasionally I need a single use item and I don't know what to do. So I just want to share with you my approach if you do need to purchase single use items for a party I would encourage you first to consider reuse instead if you can manage that that's always the best. Oh I'm having problems with my. Okay, and then if you can't go with reuse then a regular plastic with recycle content is great that really helps stimulate the recycling market for plastics so that they're more likely to be properly managed. And for sure make sure whatever you do choose is accepted in our local recycling programs that way it can whether people recycle it at your event or take it home there's definitely a place for it to go instead of the garbage. But overall the least confusing thing is reuse so reuse is always better. It's quite simple you bring your cup for contactless pour if your cafe will allow you and then you just keep reusing that cup and you keep it forever so this is actually my coffee cup at my local coffee shop and I think just myself. I've reduced about 400 coffee cups since the pandemic started because my coffee shop has allowed me to continue to bring my cup for safe contact free pours you can see she's not. I just put my cup on the counter they pour the shot and the milk in it and then I take it away and they never touch my cup. So that works really well. And we're seeing more and more businesses come into the space so we're seeing things like reusable dot com started a pilot in Vancouver and you can see in the top left here at theirs and we've seen copy where they are looking also to provide reusable coffee cups. Along with shareware they're looking at doing an office program so get in touch with them if you think your office would like to be part of a program. We've had Tom from loop present at our zero waste conference that we do every year and he said people are getting on board with getting for example their ice cream in a reusable container. And not necessarily just because they want to save the environment but because they like the functionality and the design features of the reusable containers so this is a little bit new but people are getting on board and they like it. And what Metro Vancouver is working on to encourage people to bring reuse is our new super habits campaign that we just launched on May 31st and that's my background now you know why I have this background with me today. And you know this is bringing our own bags refusing straws if we don't need them for accessibility reasons bringing our own utensils using a reusable container there's some restrictions around that right now but you can still put your leftovers if you go to a restaurant you can put them in your reusable container that you bring. And as I described already you can bring your own muck so there's all these simple everyday habits that we think are pretty super that can help save the day. And I just wanted to share some examples so this is me with my first burrito delivered by door dash as part of the reusable comms pilot so that I don't have many friends left on Facebook but some of them still follow me and all my crazy zero waste habits. And this is just a close up so before I had to recycle this plastic and now I can just have a reusable container that I rinse and then bring back to the local store and then they give me a new one if I want more more food they give me a fresh one that's clean and sanitized and safe. I also get my essentials from a refill grocery store. And I think that's a pretty cool thing to try out if you haven't tried it. This is my contactless coffee cup pour. And the other thing I try to do which which according to our campaign is pretty super is I try to get rid of all these kombucha that's a fermented tea drink it's non alcoholic but it's quite delicious and busy if you've never tried it and I get it refilled at my local brewery. I don't have beer but I don't drink the beer I just drink the kombucha and they have a browser exchange program so every time I go there and fill my kombucha up I get a different grower which I think is pretty great so it's always good to ask local businesses if they have these programs so you can participate in them. And I encourage you all also to go to our campaign which is now available at www.superhabits.ca and get recognition for all of the wonderful things you do and if you have super habits that you would like to share with the group I encourage you to put them in the chat along with your questions. And yeah so now I'll just leave it with you what's your super habit. Thank you Karen. That was great. Nice and quick. Oh my goodness. But there's been a lot of comments in the Q&A in the chat and I think what I'm going to do is I'll start with the Q&A. And I'm going to kind of zero in on the questions rather than the comments that are posted here so there have been a lot of questions just regarding using reusable containers. Because of course during COVID some places we're just saying no sorry not filling that coffee cup you have to use one of our disposables and that seems to have been similar with takeout food. So just in terms of the kind of provincial laws right now and the health laws can restaurants can they use them now again can coffee shops fill your cup. Yeah there was a short period of time when the advice from the provincial health officer was not to accept cups and not to accept bags at the grocery store but that changed during the pandemic and now if if your coffee shop does allow it you can bring your own or sorry if if your coffee shop does allow it you can bring your own cup and most of the coffee shops that I've seen allow it do what I demonstrated in in my photos which is they you put your coffee cup down and they never touch it they just fill it. So the latte art hasn't been as beautiful and I think that bothers my barista but I try to encourage them by saying that they're now becoming very like abstract artists and like one of them is actually getting pretty good. So I do like hearts and things even though he's not holding the bug. Wow. But it's impressive. You know it's about chatting with your local. So like so for me it's a it's a local coffee shop and I've got to know the baristas I understand like working with Starbucks they're kind of limited by the Starbucks corporate policy although I have heard that Starbucks is working on a reusable cup share program so perhaps that will unlock that opportunity for them like different different coffee shops are going to choose different options to allow their customers to participate in reusable. That's great and when you would that burrito you were eating so you said it was delivered by door dash. Yeah so reusable calm. Started a pilot and so the way it works is they had banditas which is a local restaurant here participate and so that's where my burrito came from but instead of getting it in a disposable single use clamshell or whatever they would normally use. They put it in the reusable container because I was part of the pilot so I was pretty excited to have that happen for the first time in March. And they are looking to expand so I haven't kept track of where they are now but hopefully if you want them tell your favorite take out restaurant about them and maybe they'll be able to participate with them. That's great. It's really good. So going back to the Q&A there is some questions about the bio plastic. So the question is is the simple message that if it says compostable don't put it in the recycling bin otherwise do so. Yeah so yeah so I guess probably that was a bit of a confusing slide and I always struggled to explain it in a simple way so glad you asked. The bottom line is if it's plastic labeled compostable or biodegradable it doesn't go in the recycling and I can't speak to all the programs across Canada but in the lower mainland. Most of the local green bin programs do not accept plastics labeled compostable or biodegradable so our message unfortunately is that those items go in the garbage. Oh wow okay this is I know this is a dilemma I have with buying coffee beans. The choice seems to be between truly plastic and these compostable ones but they're not they can't go in the green bin so we just throw them out. Yeah as you probably guess I'm a coffee lover and it's very challenging because in order to keep the coffee fresh which all coffee lovers love. They use two materials and I think most of the materials it's either plastic and metal which you could double check with Recycle BC but you might be able to drop it off at the depot. But if it's plastic and paper which I've seen then it's again something that would have to go into the garbage because it wouldn't be in the program so it's challenging with coffee. You can get them refilled at some of the local cafes some of them have been refilled programs but you do have to search around because they're not super popular yet. Okay now sorry some of these comments are really long so someone is just talking about what they do in Europe which is really interesting and they say that way ahead of Canada. Each household has way more special bins for different kinds of recycling materials and why is Canada so far behind. Do you have any sense of what the sort of global picture is with with all of this. I'll just speak to our region because that's where I know all the details and so I would say that actually Metro Vancouver is a leader globally we have talked with communities in Europe. And yes some of them rival our diversion rates and have similar performance but globally we actually have very high capture of recycling and very high participation thanks to probably most of the folks listening in today that are doing the right things and putting their materials in the right spot. And I think it is a choice how many bins you have and there's been research done about for example some of the communities just have one been locally for containers and paper and some have paper and containers separate. But what we're looking for is capturing as much materials as possible for the markets and we are able to do that with our BC program so I think. Like I'm not sure exactly the program that they participated in Europe most I get it all the time where someone says oh I come from this community and it was like this. There why is it different here and in order to answer that I have to figure out well where you from and what what did you participate in. Right. Okay. All right I just do a couple more questions so someone was asking if you would be able to provide the link to the provincial legislation. That's legislates that people are allowed to bring your reusable food containers so I didn't know what is there such legislation I thought it was sort of up to the store whether they did it or not. Yeah so where I go is the DC CDC food. I'm looking it up right now the DC CDC guidelines to the operators. I'll try and find the link and post it. Here it is. So here's I don't have. I haven't had a chance to scroll through and find the exact clause but all the rules around what businesses can and cannot do during COVID are kind of in this. Okay. DC CDC website. And so they would be the best resource if we just defer to them for all of our. All of our answers to these kind of questions. Okay great. Thanks. I'm just going to do a couple more questions. So this is it's kind of an interesting one because it's sort of more of it at a policy level. Has Metro Vancouver ever considered a residential level. So condo or apartment building workshop training approach rather than a regional high level something more directing geared to residents. Sorry. Did you say one more time. Yeah. So it's it's just a talking about kind of training consumers. So the question is whether Metro Vancouver has ever considered a residential level like condo or apartment building workshop to rather than a regional high level something more direct and geared to residents. Right. Okay. I see that one. So our role has traditionally been to provide that high level resource and then our role has traditionally been to provide that high level resource. And then our member jurisdictions sometimes go out to the residents directly. So for example when we when Richmond started their agreement program they had community lobby events and they were actually in all of the different buildings and so many of our members have done that work. And we we don't necessarily have that work happening right now. But that's a very interesting suggestion for us to encourage again because we did it I guess quite a few years ago and perhaps there's a renewed need as we've had some maybe turnover and all of the buildings in the region. Okay, good. Great. Thank you so much. So in the chat there's just been tons of ideas and suggestions and people posing questions and stuff and then just want to thank everybody for doing that and everyone can see the chat so I don't really need to kind of go over those those are really great. But I think that kind of wraps it up so I don't have to lean if you want to come back in and say anything. Thank you so much Karen that was really so nicely put presented and nice and straightforward ideas that we can all easily understand and adopt. So that's the link. So did you want to say anything. Yeah, I wanted to say thank you as well Karen for sharing those resources with us. I can ask you one more question. I know this. I'm not sure if I see it in the Q&A but this is something I've heard in a previous session with you that was quite informative it's to understand. Why is it that residents can't put their soft plastic bags in a recycling? We recycle the hard plastics. I know it has to do with machinery potentially but if you can expand a little bit a bit of that and the type of recycling we can do from our home in our different bins that would be great. So luckily in BC I see we have some Victoria contingents on here as well and luckily in BC the programs run by Recycle BC and so the residential recycling is largely the same everywhere and the reason Recycle BC asks residents to drop things like foam and bags off at the depot instead of in their residential recycling bins is that when you add those items to the recycling so first the bags what happens is if things are inside the bags then they can't be separated out and then what happens is they go along a conveyor belt and then on that conveyor belt the optical cameras identify what's what and then once they identify what's what they use little air jets to shoot it into the right container so it can be veiled and sent to the market and so if you put your things in the plastic bags they can hide things in there also if you just put loose plastic bags it can wrap around the many screens and different things that they use in those facilities to sort all of the materials and so by you putting your bags in there you can make recycling a lot more expensive for the recycling operators. Okay. Right. Interesting. Yeah. I think we have some industry industry folks in here as well as they most MRFs have a bag opener it shouldn't be a problem. I realize that some facilities have those but in general it's just a lot more effective for the for the facilities if the material is loose and not in the bags. So if you if you want to recycle soft plastic bags you recycle DC has lists of places where you can take them. You can go to Metro Vancouver recycles, or you can, like most London drugs, except them and a lot of grocery stores accept them so the easiest thing to do is just bring them back, or bring your own bags it like I don't. I don't do a lot of plastic bag recycling anymore by bringing my own bags so that's for me the most effective approach is just bringing my own bags. Right. Of course. Yeah. That's the number one right. Okay. That's great. Super thank you so very much. Lean for hosting us with the library must have much appreciated and Karen for sharing your expertise and it's been great to see all the questions and all the chats with the tips and tricks shared amongst audience members so thank you so much for that. I'll do a quick quick close and then if we have some more questions popping up since we have a little bit more time feel free to answer those afterwards Karen. I just want to highlight again. Next event we have June 22 with Ocean Ambassador Canada please don't miss out. Also wanted to highlight a couple campaigns we have going on at the moment. One is with all growth logging obviously that's something that's very pertinent to be here right now. So we are meeting with MLAs we are working with local city councils also to put a motion to demand all growth logging deferral from the government. It seems that there's changes and announcements on the daily basis these days. We're also running a divestment campaign that we've started this year and we continue with linking with media and providing support and advice were needed. And most recently we've made a formal submission to the federal government environment committee hearing for BLC 12 which is the climate accountability act in collaboration with the larger for our kids collective. So loads going on so if you want to stay informed to understand what we're doing the upcoming events and the campaigns. Please stay in touch with either our website or contacting us by email I'll post that again. And it should be great to also hear from everyone here. We have a newsletter that comes out on a regular basis where we can also keep you up to date so check out our website and you can sign up to stay involved that way. Okay, so that was for the quick plug. Was there anything else that came up in the in the chat or questions anymore questions for Karen. You know, there is one more question I could could ask you about and it's some. Is there any regulation concerning the recyclability or compost ability of takeout containers. I often see containers made of paper lined with plastic. Is this still allowed and if so why when there are better alternatives like wax cardboard. It's interesting wax cardboard is actually a challenge for us. But yes this is something that we're kind of looking at when we're looking at the unintended consequences of for example the phone bands like we're monitoring what's happening and how many other materials are are being put on the market that aren't foam and what their impacts are so I don't have an answer for you right now as to whether or not those regulations are in place because as far as I'm aware they're not but it's something that you know if we see a big rebound in other materials it might be something that will be addressed. I hope is that we'll move towards more reuse and container share programs instead of more of these as the very in tune participant pointed out kind of equally hard to recycle alternatives. Yeah, less garbage. So I just wanted to let everybody know because there's been so many interesting things in the chat. This session is recorded. And I will send everybody the recording link afterwards it'll go up on the library's YouTube channel, but I also can share the chat with everybody at that point because I know everyone isn't seeing all the chat. And then then all of those great ideas and links and things will be saved that way as well. I don't know. I think that's about it. If unless some to lean you had anything else. No, good from my side. Thank you very much. That's great. Thank you again Karen that was so interesting really appreciate it and we're looking forward to seeing the campaign I hope it's successful. And I hope that people have started thinking about what their super habit might be and where they want to start whether it's bringing their own mug, or, or using reasonable to bring their takeaway away I saw a comment saying that they didn't think that was allowed but that that could be true because there's different health authorities for different areas to always check with your local health authority but in the Vancouver health authority we've been told that that's that's okay. As long as the person's bringing it to their table and just putting their own leftovers in their own container. Okay, anyways, let's work to do but thank you everyone for for participating in for doing your part. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. Good night everyone see you on the 20. Thank you. Bye bye everyone take care. Bye bye.