HALIFAX—A report the environment minister says he needs before acting on plastic waste reduction in Nova Scotia is due this summer after months of delays.

Environment ministers from across the country, including Nova Scotia’s Gordon Wilson, agreed last week to a national action plan on zero plastic waste.

Details for implementing the six priority actions were incomplete, and the plan left next steps in the hands of each jurisdiction, but the provinces and territories are not obligated to act on it.

Wilson, who hosted the meeting of environment ministers in Halifax, said he was committed to “move forward” on eliminating plastic waste in Nova Scotia, although he had no firm timeline. He said he couldn’t consider extended producer responsibility (EPR) — the plan’s top priority — without the results of a study on the efficiency of waste management in the province.

That study — contracted out to engineering firm AECOM Canada Ltd. — was due last October, but the deadline was pushed back to April and the final report has yet to be submitted.

The Municipal-Provincial Priorities Group and Divert NS — a non-profit arm of the government — oversee the contract for the study, and since his department is not part of the agreement, Wilson wouldn’t comment on it.

He hoped the study would give “a very good snapshot of how effectively the existing facilities that we have are working,” but wouldn’t be more specific about how it might inform his response to the zero plastic waste plan.

“At this point in time, I don’t want to raise any kind of expectation of what I would see in it, I’d rather make a comment on that report after I receive it.”

“I anxiously await seeing it,” he added.

EPR is a well-established tactic for reducing plastic waste and has been implemented in other Canadian provinces and other jurisdictions around the world. It puts the environmental costs of using, recycling and disposing of products into their upfront market price.

The Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM) wants the province to legislate an EPR model for all plastic and paper products and requested as much in 2018. This spring, NSFM and the Nova Scotia Solid Waste-Resource Management regional chairs committee submitted a detailed proposal to the province for such a model.

Wilson said that proposal and the efficiency study “tie very closely” and he would wait for the study before addressing the proposal.

Stephen Rayworth is the general manager for the Cumberland Joint Services Management Authority — which handles solid waste for three municipalities in Cumberland County — and he’s the overseer of the efficiency study contract for the Municipal-Provincial Priorities Group.

He said the setbacks were due to challenges in data collection and he expects to see the final report within a month. He’s seen drafts of some sections of the report already and expects to see a recommendation for a province-wide EPR model in the final report.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“It’s a proven method of gaining efficiencies in the processing side,” Rayworth said in an interview.

Environment department spokesperson Lisa Jarrett said in an email that the province is introducing EPR for oil and glycol containers in 2020 and already has EPR for electronics.

Read more about: