Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAN

Kamloops still working on bag ban bylaw, but one local store can help folks reduce consumer waste

Aug 3, 2021 | 4:02 PM

KAMLOOPS — The effort to limit the use of single-use plastics has been in the works in the City of Kamloops since early-2019. That effort may have received a boost last week, as the provincial government amended a regulation under the Community Charter to allow municipalities to enact such a ban. The change will allow BC cities to do away with items such as plastic bags, styrofoam containers, and plastic utensils without the approval of the BC Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

It’s one small step a person can take that if done consistently and by many, can make a big impact on the environment.

“The TNRD did an estimate on our 2018 waste composition to the Mission Flats Landfill,” City of Kamloops Sustainability Program Coordinator Josephine Howitt tells CFJC Today. “They estimate that 290 tonnes of single-use carryout plastic bags were landfilled in that year.”

While that may not seem like a lot, those bags – along with many other single-use plastic items that get tossed into the garbage – can find their way into our natural spaces.

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“They’re very common items found in waterway and shoreline clean-ups,” Howitt says. “So they do have impacts on wildlife and eventually human health when they’re in our environment.”

That impact is one main reason Jennifer Norman opened her business last year. Our Footprints is an eco-store and refillery, with many product choices designed to keep waste out of the landfill.

“So we’re trying to move away from recycling and more towards refilling, reusing, and composting,” Norman tells CFJC Today.

You can bring your own jar – they have some available if you forget yours – and fill up on common items, from toothpaste to deodorant, as well as household cleaners.

“We have a glass jar repurposing program. The community donates glass and metal jars – we’re able to sanitize them at high heat, then put them back out for reuse – we’ve repurposed thousands of jars,” Norman says. “With our refill program, we’ve been able to divert over 100,000 single-use plastics [from the landfill].”

After the announcement from the province last week that banning single-use plastic bags will no longer need approval from the ministry, city staff plan to keep working on that file. However, sometimes the best solution is one that already exists.

“I would say the best reusable bag that people have is one they already own,” Howitt says. “We just need to get into the habit of making sure we have them in our vehicle or our purse when we need them.”