Everyone plays a role in reducing the plastic waste that chokes our landfills and the plastic pollution that litters our streets, shorelines, waterways, and even our food supply. Improving how plastics are made, used, and managed can help protect biodiversity, the environment and our health, strengthen sustainable economies, create jobs, and fight climate change.
Today, as Canada welcomes the world to Ottawa for the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-4), the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced over $3.3 million in funding to support Canadian organizations that are developing innovative solutions to address plastic pollution.
Nine small- and medium sized companies will each receive up to $150,000 to develop environmentally acceptable and cost-effective solutions to help better reuse plastics or improve the end-of-life management of plastic film that commonly wraps consumer items. The funding for these projects is being provided through the two latest Canadian Plastics Innovation Challenges, which has committed over $25 million to Canadian small- and medium-sized businesses to date.
More than $2 million from Environment and Climate Change Canada's funding for Advancing a Circular Economy for Plastics in Canada is going to 12 recipients for projects that will identify new opportunities, facilitate collaboration and information sharing, help reduce investment risk, and encourage the adoption of circular solutions. Circular solutions are ways that products and materials are kept in circulation (or in use) by either maintaining, reusing, refurbishing, remanufacturing, or recycling them.
Today's funding is part of the Government of Canada's commitment to reducing plastic waste and pollution while supporting good jobs in a sustainable and growing economy. It is also an important part of Canada's evidence-based and comprehensive plan to move toward a circular economy through a range of complementary actions across plastics' life cycle.
