More than 40 of Canada’s leading environmental and civil groups are calling for the federal government to use its G7 presidency to ensure that Canada has zero plastic waste by 2025.

Released in a joint declaration on Monday, groups are challenging the Canadian government to lead the way in meaningful action on plastic pollution. Meanwhile, a motion before Vancouver’s city council on Tuesday is also calling for the federal government to create a national plastic pollution strategy.

The meeting was still in session at the time of publication.

According to Ashley Wallis, program manager at Environmental Defence, Canada is recycling less than 11 per cent of its plastic waste, as compared to the 9 per cent global average.

“The rest is left piling up in our landfills, rivers, lakes and oceans. Voluntary, industry-led initiatives and empty promises from manufacturers aren’t going to cut it,” Wallis said. “The world is looking to Canada for leadership on plastic pollution and we urgently need to step up.”

Wallis told StarMetro that they’ve mapped out the way forward with 18 recommended actions. She highlighted the need to fully ban plastics that cannot be recycled, setting enforceable and harmonized national plastic recycling targets, implementing aggressive minimum recycled content legislation that makes plastic producers financially and operationally responsible.

The aim is to see a strategy by the fall at the latest, which Wallis said she hopes the government will let environmental groups review.

Provinces are currently free to set their own targets, which makes services vary widely between municipalities, the release stated.

But the declaration argued it’s time for the federal government to step in.

“We would like to see time-bound targets,” she said, noting the goal is at least 85 per cent by 2025. “The urgency is there.”

Plastic pollution will be a central theme of the upcoming G7 summit on June 8 and 9 in Charlevoix, Quebec. Wallis said the statistics are astounding: More than 12 billion tonnes of plastic in landfills is expected by 2050, and in the same year more plastic than fish is expected in the oceans.

In 2010, Canada estimated a release of roughly 8,000 tonnes of plastic waste into the water ways, which Wallis said is as heavy as 75 blue whales.

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“We have seen industries propose voluntary initiatives but at the end of the day if there isn’t a regulatory backbone, then nobody is requiring them to achieve them,” she explained, noting industry must begin to take responsibility for end of life collection of materials.

“We have great faith that they will better capture and collect once they are required to do so with legally-binding targets,” she said. “This will work better if everybody is operating within the same framework.”

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And the broader international scope is just as important as well, Wallis explained, noting Canada needs to take a leading role to help developing countries achieve their targets as well.

The G7 presidency is a perfect time for Canada to champion a global treaty which would set an ambitious international target for eliminating plastic waste, said Yannick Beaudoin, the director general of Ontario and Northern Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation.

“A truckload of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans every minute,” he said. “So this is an issue that needs to be tackled on every front.”

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