RANS: Maritime Restaurants Aren’t Ready For Plastics Ban
MONCTON — A significant milestone in Canada’s environmental policy, directly affecting restaurants and food businesses, came and went on December 20. But many Atlantic Canadian food-related businesses likely didn’t notice.
“I would simply say that it would be the majority of people [who] were probably not ready for December 20,” says Gordon Stewart, the executive director of the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia.
“We’ve had it in our newsletters but it’s something that’s not on people’s radar screen.”
That ‘something’ is a ban on single-use plastics. On Tuesday, the federal government banned the import and manufacture of several single-use plastic items related to the food and restaurant industry, like cutlery, cup lids, and takeout containers.
Businesses can still use the items they have on hand for the next year but when that inventory runs out they must switch to sustainable alternatives. Many of those alternatives come at an increased cost and are between 10-25 percent more expensive than the current, plastic offerings.
The move is part of the government’s phased approach to the elimination of hard-to-recycle, single-use plastic items. reusable grocery store bags are examples of earlier phases brought on by businesses in anticipation of the changing rules.
“I think the biggest thing is it’s going to take an adjustment period,” Stewart says. “It will take longer than it did with plastic bags. That story was so advertised so heavily, for so long.”
Unlike the weekly reminders at the grocery store that plastic bags were on the way out, many restauranteurs may not be aware that this change is happening until they’re restocking their inventory.
“It’s a big move for Nova Scotia, and for Canada. That’s one of the challenges because, all of a sudden, it’s not just a bump [in demand for recyclable items] in Nova Scotia or Halifax or Saint. John – it’s a bump right across Canada,” he says.
“That means the demand has got to go straight up and that’s going to affect the supply line. It’s going to be hard to get all of that product for a while until the market settles down.”
According to Dave Richards, vice president of sales at Atlantic Canadian distributor Capital Paper, warehouses are already full of these now-restricted items in anticipation of the switch.
He says from a distribution point of view there are good and bad environmental aspects to this product change.
“As an industry, generally speaking, there’s lots of benefits for us as a distributor,” he says of the switch from foam containers to paper-based ones. “Foam is big, and light, but there’s not much you can fit on a pallet.”
“If you go to a paper-based product it can fit denser in a box, you can put more on pallet, it takes up less space [in a warehouse]. That’s a win.”
“The downside for the environment, theoretically, is it’s five to six times heavier than what has been replaced. And a lot of this [recyclable] product has to ship from China compared to the product that’s being replaced [which is manufactured in North America], so there’s a bit of a gray area,” he says.
Richards says he is concerned about upticks in demand but that the preparations distributors have made in anticipation of this change should help flatten the demand spike. He anticipates there will be increased costs associated with the shift.
“We’ve seen it coming, we’re prepared,” he says of the switch. But at the same time, the challenges of the past two years have shown how at times fragile, and volatile, supply chains can be.
“We’ve dealt with supply chains for two years. All of a sudden, with a certain lag depending on how much inventory, we all have to transition away from a product that’s been used and accepted in the marketplace, to alternatives.”
“We are concerned about the speed at which we have to change to that alternative. Will the raw material be there?” he muses.
“The cost pressures have been immense in our in our industry the last two years…we are wondering a bit, is that going to happen again?”
One solution to some of these problems would be a more robust manufacturing sector for these items in Canada.
“We’re hearing a little bit more about onshoring,” Richards says. “That’s more and more in the conversation about manufacturers that want to do an onshore rather than importing it from overseas.”
Not many manufacturers in Canada and North America at picking up on that opportunity right now as the economies of scale are not quite there yet.
“The Chinese product is still predominantly the cheapest product,” he says.
But for now, there’s an understanding that the change is happening, and in the long run, it will be for the better, for manufacturers, distributors, and restauranteurs like the ones Gordon Stewart represents.
“The end result is, it’s better for everyone to be using less and less things that are just going to go to a dump site,” Stewart says. “And I think that’s a positive thing.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].