WHEREAS the Province has made a commitment to the Three Rs of reduce, reuse and recycle; AND WHEREAS the introduction of 15 litre non-refillable PET containers will increase the amount of waste entering landfills: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Ministry of Environment be urged to ban 15 litre non-refillable water containers from use in British Columbia.
Ministry of Environment The Ministry of Environment has a Service Plan commitment to add two products to industry product stewardship every three years and packaging is one candidate product under consideration for a provincial stewardship program. Should packaging be added as a regulated product category within the Recycling Regulation, non-refillable 15 litre bottles will likely be included within the scope of the eventual program that industry would be required to develop and operate. It has not been the policy of the Ministry of Environment to ban products in order to achieve environmental objectives but rather to require producers of products to assume life cycle responsibility for products they produce and sell. Furthermore, careful consideration must be given to understanding potential consequences of any proposed product ban as well as how those consequences could be managed. In this respect, the optimal solution to managing waste from 15 litre non-refillable bottles that are not captured within the provinces deposit-refund system is likely within an industry product stewardship program under the Recycling Regulation.