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Vandal urges plastic-bottle ban

Pushes for end to sales in city-owned buildings

By: Bartley Kives

Posted: 07/4/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

THE plastic bottle will be banished from city-owned facilities if council's public works boss has his way.

St. Boniface Coun. Dan Vandal has launched an effort to eliminate the sale of all beverages sold in plastic bottles in city-owned facilities. Such a move mean plastic bottles of water, soda pop, juice and sport drinks would disappear from vending machines and cafeterias in city offices, community centres, arenas and other public facilities, provided such a ban is possible.

"This would be a way of leading by example on the environmental front," Vandal said Tuesday, after council's public works committee approved a motion to explore a plastic-bottle ban.

Vandal's motion gives city solid-waste managers until October to investigate ways of eliminating the sale of plastic-bottled beverages from city-owned facilities and also implementing the ban.

The move would not affect the sale of drinks in plastic bottles anywhere else in Winnipeg. But it would go a long way in reducing the amount of plastic that winds up in landfills, Vandal said.

"We have vending machines all over the place," he said. "It doesn't all get recycled."

The opening of Winnipeg's state-of-the-art water-treatment plant, a $300-million facility completed in 2009, means there should be no reason for anyone in this city to purchase bottled water, which almost always is less pure than what comes out of the tap, Vandal said.

But banning bottled-water sales alone would simply lead more people to purchase sugary beverages, he added, explaining the decision to pursue bans of all beverages sold in plastic bottles.

Aluminum cans, meanwhile, tend to be recycled at higher rates.

Vandal's proposed ban was the second related to plastic within the past week. On June 27, the public works chairman vowed to revisit the idea of cutting the number of plastic bags that wind up in the Brady Road Landfill -- and possibly banning their distribution altogether, as Toronto has.

Winnipeg initially studied the plastic-bag issue in 2007, after Coun. Justin Swandel (St. Norbert) said plastic blowing from the landfill on to Waverley Street was a blight.

At the time, city staff concluded Winnipeg should do more to educate the public about reducing the number of plastic bags and promised to revisit the issue in the future.

On Tuesday, the public works committee gave city staff until October to provide a status report about eliminating plastic bags.

Mayor Sam Katz, meanwhile, has said it would be up to the province to enact such a ban.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 4, 2012 B1

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