Kicking off Plastic Free July with a look at how plastic affects biodiversity
After a spring that has seesawed between wet, dry, hot, and cold, summer has come to Manitoba. Many people in Manitoba are preparing to go to the beach for a day or spend time at the cottage, where we can see some biodiversity loss first hand. It’s likely that many people’s memories of beaches, lakes, and hikes will feature images of single-use plastic.
Discarded plastic isn’t just ugly and useless. It is also pervasive in and harmful to ecosystems. Whether as microplastic (pieces less than five millimetres long), macroplastic (up to 50 millimetres long), or megaplastic (longer than 50 millimetres), it carries destructive introduced species. Aquatic and terrestrial animals can become ill from eating it or be strangled to death. A 2023 study concluded that seabirds that eat plastic can develop scar tissue in their stomachs just from eating plastic. The authors have said “plasticosis” itself is bad enough to qualify as a new disease. All told, one report calls plastic pollution “the nexus of the triple planetary crisis” with biodiversity loss and climate change.
It is estimated that Canada has thrown away 79 per cent of all plastic (by volume) it has produced since 1950, with just nine percent being recycled each year. In 2019, Canada’s plastic waste was equivalent to almost 180 kilograms per person per year.
Lake Winnipeg is, unfortunately, a badly plastic-polluted aquatic body. Between 2014 and 2016, various sites sampled at Lake Winnipeg contained between 53,000 and 748,000 microplastic particles per square kilometre. Lakes Erie, Huron, and Superior, all on boundaries between Ontario and various American states, had far fewer microplastic particles per square kilometre during the same study period. In the cases of Lakes Huron and Superior, the numbers were significantly fewer. It should be unsurprising that Lake Winnipeg’s fish have begun to ingest microplastic as well. Manitoba’s lower elevation, and the sheer size of Lake Winnipeg’s watershed, help contribute to the massive plastic pollution problem; it gets plastic not only from provincial rivers but those in parts of three other provinces and five U.S. states.
Last January, the Canadian government announced plans to create a national plastics registry, which industry groups and the Government of Alberta immediately denounced (ie. those with close ties to the fossil fuel industry). In April, the federal government hosted a week-long conference that was meant to help hash out what a treaty to rein in plastic pollution would look like. It was not the first time the federal government purported to try to help solve the problem. In 2019, the federal government announced that it would ban single-use plastic by 2021, however challenges with implementation occurred when the Federal Court of Canada ruled the measure neither constitutional nor justified in November 2023. A lot more needs to be done to educate people about the harms associated with plastic production, and the alternative soltions that exist for most of the everyday single-use plastic items Canadians have come to rely on.
The good news is that the April conference saw some promise with a draft treaty being negotiated. Also, some communities have taken actions to stop plastic: in 2007 tiny Leaf Rapids, Manitoba pioneered plastic bag ban and other regions have had similar conversations over the years.
The traditional focus on individual action to solve a societal problem will not work. Reducing the actual amount of single-use plastic we use will require laws and norms to replace plastic food and beverage containers with reusable glass or compostable counterparts, for example. Manitoba doesn’t have a deposit return program for containers (aside from beer bottles and cans), a distinction it shares with only Nunavut among the constitutionally recognized subnational jurisdictions. An international treaty to rein in plastic production could be most effective. In the meantime, we can write governments, as well as businesses, calling to ban the sale or stop the production of single-use plastics. Any brave community could lead by example.
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This blog was written by Mike Bagamery, an Environmental Researcher residing on Treaty 1 Territory.
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