May 1, 2020

The Honorable The Honorable Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada Minister of Health Canada 200 Sacre-Coeur Boulevard House of Commons Gatineau, QC, Ottawa, K1A 0H3 K1A 0A6 [email protected] [email protected]

Re: AMERIPEN Comments on Draft Science Assessment of Plastic Pollution

Dear Minister Wilkinson and Minister Hajdu:

AMERIPEN – the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment – wishes to submit comments on the ’s Draft Science Assessment of Plastic Pollution (Draft), published in the Gazette Part 1 on February 1, 2020, under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). We are very concerned about the Draft that proposes to classify plastics as toxic under CEPA.

AMERIPEN is a coalition of packaging producers, users and end‐of‐life materials managers dedicated to improving packaging and the environment in North America. Our membership represents the entire packaging supply chain, including materials suppliers, packaging producers, consumer packaged goods companies and end-of-life materials managers. We have members headquartered in Canada and many of our member companies conduct commercial operations in both Canada and the United States.

We believe the Draft is not legally or technically sufficient to support the classification of plastics as toxic under CEPA. Even though AMERIPEN is a material-neutral trade association, classifying any material, plastic or otherwise, as “toxic” when that clearly is not the case from a toxicological perspective is not justified. We therefore ask you to consider the following:

1. We appreciate concern over the international movement of plastic waste and its impact on ocean debris and we recognize how classifying plastics as toxic can restrict its global movement.1 However, with the 2019 amendment to the Basel Convention to include plastic waste, we believe there is sufficient legal precedent in place to help increase transparency of global plastic flows and ultimately reduce the potential impact of mismanaged plastic wastes on our environment. We urge you to defer to the international precedent set forth through the Basel Convention rather than implement restrictions under CEPA.

1 Raubenheimer, Karen & Alistair Mcllogorm (2018) “Can the Basel and Stockholm Conventions provide a global framework to reduce the impact of marine plastic litter.” Marine Policy V. 96.

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2. Aggressive global and regional public-private commitments and partnerships are already in place to drive solutions to plastic waste and marine debris and should be given an opportunity to work. Global waste, litter, and marine debris challenges require solutions through these partnerships. 3. Given that plastics in the environment is fundamentally a solid waste issue and not a chemical management issue, we question whether CEPA is the right regulatory framework to address this.2 4. The generalized approach in the Draft to review all macroplastics and microplastics lacks an adequate scientific foundation and is therefore inadequate to support adding “plastics” or “single use plastics” generally as a category under CEPA. 5. We are concerned that Canada appears to be poised to skip a critical step under CEPA, namely, the development of a scientifically robust risk assessment that presents knowledge of exposures and hazards and integrates these to quantify potential risks to ecological species and human health. 6. A truncated and incomplete CEPA review that bypasses risk assessment is inconsistent with Canada’s strong science-based ethos and its commitments to risk principles under the recently signed US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. 7. Perhaps most importantly, we are deeply concerned that moving forward with risk management action could jeopardize public health given the key role that many plastic products play in health care, particularly considering the ongoing global coronavirus crisis. In fact, sanitary single-use plastic medical products and food packaging are on the front lines protecting public health during the current pandemic crisis – and every day.

We urge Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada to consider an alternative, better suited mechanisms, such as the Basel Convention, to address the issue of plastic waste. We likewise urge the agencies to consider the public health consequences of making a CEPA toxic determination that the public will associate with plastics, plastic packaging, or resins – a government determination that surely will be misunderstood and misinterpreted by the public at the worst possible time. In the event that CEPA continues to be used as a platform for regulatory decision making, we urge you to consider the basis for specific risk assessments supported by complete scientific assessments for each specific plastic product, packaging, or resin as warranted.

As Canada and the rest of the world are grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, single-use plastics are playing a critical role in preventing further spread to vulnerable populations. Sanitary, single-use plastics are right now delivering critical health and safety benefits across a wide range of products and packaging, including surgical and medical gowns; N95 respirators and face masks; protective sheeting; single use disinfecting wipes; surgical gloves and other gloves; packaging for medical devices, medicines and pharmaceuticals; food service and storage packaging; and a wide variety of other critical goods and services. Making a CEPA-toxic determination at this time could confuse consumers, businesses, and

2 CEPA is less suited to evaluating polymers that are so low in toxicity that that they would be considered low hazard or low priority for risk evaluation in a chemical management regime. This would include polymers used in contact with foods for food packaging applications that are already regulated to meet criteria for safety – taking migration into foods into account.

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others, and lead to choices that impede the global coronavirus response, impacting public health and potentially the spread of the virus.

Canada's policy on single-use plastics must be informed by science, careful deliberation, a robust public comment process, and clear coordination with its trading partners. This is important to both the global trade system and our collective ability to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thank you for your consideration of our concerns and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Sincerely,

Dan Felton Executive Director – AMERIPEN cc: , Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, [email protected]

Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, [email protected]

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