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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Aren't there many legitimate uses of single-use plastics? Like medical products? What will Canada replace them with?

By having nuanced legislation and regulation?

This isn't a formal declaration of rule making, or legislation, simply a declaration of intent from the Prime Minister. There's no formal weight behind this (except probably to start getting internal government bodies working on policy).

There's lot of time and room for sane (or dumb) rules to come out of this.

Medical (and similar) use exceptions are common. For example RoHS initially had a medical device exemption (and still has an implantable device exemption).

So the headline is just absolute bollocks and means nothing when you start to interrogate it? Oh ok.

Do you expect a headline to tell you the whole story?

Why not 'reduce use of single-use plastics'? Or 'ban some'? Really easy to make the headline more truthful.

Not really necessary. A reasonable person would take it exactly how it was intended: "Canada will ban all single use plastics (except where health or safety are at stake)." It's kind of, you know, implied.

Of course they're not going to require that hospitals re-use syringes and the like.

> Trudeau did not specify the products to be banned, but said likely candidates include plastic bags, straws, cutlery, plates and stir sticks “where supported by scientific evidence and warranted.”

I don't think legitimate medical uses of single use plastics are at risk here, as long as no reasonable alternative exists.

>likely candidates include plastic bags, straws, cutlery, plates and stir sticks “where supported by scientific evidence and warranted.”

speaking of, what is the scientific evidence like for banning single use plastics? eg. the uk and denmark government found that single use plastic bags aren't worse for the environment than paper bags.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

But aren't they worse than reusable bags?

...assuming they get reused. If you're the forgetful person who buys bags every time, using reusable bags is probably worse than the environment. That's why banning bags aren't the right approach. Impose a surcharge/tax/minimum price on the bags. If you're not going to remember to bring reusable bags when single use bags cost 50 cents each, you're probably not going to remember to bring reusable bags when single use bags are banned and all you can buy are 50 cent reusable bags.

It's a law banning the use of single-use plastic for (a large number of) specific use-cases where it's unnecessary; not a law banning single-use plastics generally.

When this single-use plastics ban was in the news a year ago, there was a ton of exceptions to it.

It seems like in practice this will basically amount to a ban on plastic straws and grocery bags.

I suspect there will be exemptions. But it is really amazing how much there is left over from medical waste.

But most people actively receive health care infrequently, compared to a daily or weekly cadence for consuming groceries or coffee or whatever. As a fraction of the plastic waste that a typical person generates, how much is medical?

One does have to watch that the solution isn't worse. Plastic packaging is cheap because it takes very little people, resources, and energy to make.

A lot of the issue is that we haven't been really using market approaches to deal with it. If the creators where financially a physically responsible for the proper recycling, they would be motivated to use less and make it cheaper to reuse. The current recycling makes the problem a municipal one, in many places, who are ill equipped to deal with it... then we end up shipping it elsewhere.

I had a post-surgical “thing” (details spared for the squeamish) early in the year that took a daily use of supplies for a few months. Decades of recycling, bicycle commuting, and EV ownership seemed wiped away by the shear amount of waste generated each and every day. And I had time to come up with alternatives as I laid there with my restricted activity, and came up with no alternatives. I mean, can you even get corn starch alternatives sterile without watching them melt? :-)

So, yeah, I’m confident medical stuff will be on the exception list. At the same time, I know of folks that need continuing supplies for their care, such as wound care, but know none personally. Even my thing eventually ended.

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