Goal 12: Reduce waste and transition to zero-emission vehicles.

12.3: By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses
12.4: By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment
12.5: By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.
12.7: Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities

By transitioning to a cleaner and more circular economy that prioritizes reducing consumption and waste generation, reusing the resources already extracted, and finding processes and technologies that take a holistic systems-based approach to minimizing waste throughout the economy, we can help reduce negative impacts on the environment. Doing this also improves resilience to resource shortages, rising or volatile prices, and supply chain interruptions.

The circular economy is founded on 3 principles: design pollution and waste out of the economy, keep products and materials in use (through sharing, reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, repurposing and recycling), and work with nature to regenerate and enhance ecosystems. Using these principles, we can sustainably manage our economy for the benefit of current and future generations.

Developing the circular economy provides opportunities for innovation in the way that material resources are able to be reclaimed and reused throughout supply chains as well as changing the norm of throwing out old or broken products. As Canada aims to reduce the amount of waste produced, it will be important to look at circularity sector by sector to overcome unique barriers and take advantage of existing and emerging opportunities. In a 2021 study published by the Council of Canadian Academies, Canada's circularity rate, a measure of the contribution of recycled content towards the overall use of materials, was estimated at 6.1% in 2020. When compared to the average circularity rate of 12.8% reported by Eurostat for the European Union countries in 2020, Canada has room to improve how efficiently it utilizes resources.

Right to Repair

Bill C-244, An Act to amend the Copyright Act (diagnosis, maintenance and repair), was re-introduced in the House of Commons in February 2022. This Bill would amend the Copyright Act to allow people to work around a technological protection measure in a computer program for the purpose of diagnosis, maintenance or repair of a product in which the program is used. It also allows people and businesses to manufacture, import, distribute, sell, rent, and provide services to that effect.

This is a first step towards a broader respect for the Right to Repair - the use of legislative and regulatory means to require manufacturers to make devices easier for users to service and to make replacement parts, tools and repair manuals available and affordable. These efforts support a transition to a circular economy by including reuse capability, reparability, and service economy as well as reducing waste, specifically e-waste, and lowering costs for consumers.

Many efforts by the public and private sectors as well as individual Canadians have focused on addressing plastic waste and pollution. Globally, roughly 8 million tonnes of plastic enter oceans each year from land and sea-based activities, causing an estimated USD $13 billion in damages annually to marine ecosystems. By improving the processes involved in plastic production, Canada has the opportunity to limit a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Finding solutions to plastic pollution and waste has emerged as a global priority, increasing momentum for a circular plastics economy.

The Waste Management Hierarchy

The waste management hierarchy outlines the set of preferred actions for preventing and managing waste. It is a means for all Canadians, from civil society to governments, to make purchase and use decisions that will contribute to a circular plastics economy, by reducing, repairing, reusing and recycling plastic items.

Working with its provincial and territorial colleagues, the Government of Canada supports the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in taking this approach nationally, as described in the Canada-wide Strategy on Zero Plastic Waste.

Food loss and waste is also a global problem of enormous economic, environmental, and societal significance. A 2020 study estimates that food waste made up about 23% of the waste landfilled in Canada in 2016. Food waste disposed of in landfills produces methane, a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. Emissions from Canadian municipal solid waste landfills account for 24% of national methane emissions. Canada's landfills present an opportunity to turn these emissions into a source of biogas, or refined further into renewable natural gas that can be blended into natural gas pipelines, decarbonizing Canada's natural gas consumption.

Critical minerals are the building blocks for the clean and digitized economy. They are essential for renewable energy and clean technology applications (batteries, permanent magnets, solar panels and wind turbines); they are also required inputs for advanced manufacturing supply chains, including defence and security technologies, consumer electronics, agriculture, medical applications and critical infrastructure. Canada is already a top global producer of many critical minerals and has the capacity to produce much more.

Transportation accounts for a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, of which the majority comes from the on-road sector, including light-duty vehicles and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. One way to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions is to replace vehicles powered by fossil fuels (internal combustion engines, or ICEs), with zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). In doing so, it will be important to ensure that the life-cycle carbon footprint associated with producing, powering and recycling zero-emission vehicles (and their component parts, such as lithium-ion batteries) is lower than that of ICE vehicles.

Reducing the number of cars needed to support living across Canada by investing in public transportation, walkable communities, and car-sharing can also reduce emissions and support sustainable cities and communities. Efforts will also be required in other transportation modes, including air, rail, marine, and off-road engines, all of which have opportunities for efficiency improvements and electrification or other zero or low carbon alternative fuels.

How the Government of Canada contributes

The Government of Canada has committed to reduce plastic pollution and waste, with an approach that works at each stage of the plastics life cycle, and follows the waste management hierarchy. It is promoting a circular economy that fosters sustainable design of plastic products and materials so that they can be reused, remanufactured or recycled and therefore retained in the economy for as long as possible.

Canada continues to be recognized as an international leader in combatting plastic pollution, stemming from both its 2018 Group of 7 (G7) Presidency and its ongoing championing of the Ocean Plastics Charter. The charter, now endorsed by 28 governments and 75 Canadian, global and regional businesses and organizations, takes a comprehensive lifecycle approach to tackling plastic pollution. It lays the groundwork to ensure that plastics are designed for longer product life and increased recovery, such as through reuse and recycling.

Domestically, the government is working with provinces and territories through the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) to implement the Canada-wide Strategy and Action Plans on Zero Plastic Waste. The CCME is currently implementing phase 2 of the Action Plan. As part of the commitments under the Ocean Protection Plan, new regulations banning 6 single-use plastics were published in June 2022, and includes items such as checkout bags, cutlery, and foodservice ware made from or containing problematic plastics. The new Regulations will eliminate more than 125,000 tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic products in the first year of implementation and 1.3 million tonnes over the next ten years. It is contributing to the appropriate management of single-use items that are harmful in the environment, developing recycled content regulations so more plastic remains in the economy, and proposing labelling requirements to help Canadians better recycle and compost.

Meanwhile, the Chemicals Management Plan aims to reduce risks posed by chemicals, polymers, and organisms. These substances are assessed for potential effects on human health and the environment. Risk management actions are developed and implemented to mitigate these impacts if substances are found to be harmful to human health or the environment.

Canada is party to legally binding international agreements that prevent waste and litter, control the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and other wastes, and ensure such wastes are disposed of in an environmentally sound way, including the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.

Canada's 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan outlines Canada's commitment to develop a light duty vehicles zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales mandate that will set annually increasing requirements towards achieving 100% of their sales by 2035. The Emissions Reduction Plan also signaled the Government's plan to launch an integrated strategy to reduce emissions from medium-and heavy-duty vehicles with the aim of reaching 35% of their total sales being ZEVs by 2030. The government has committed to develop a medium-and heavy-duty vehicles ZEV regulation to require 100% medium-and heavy-duty vehicles sales to be ZEVs by 2040 for a subset of vehicle types based on feasibility, with interim 2030 regulated sales requirements that would vary for different vehicle categories based on feasibility, and explore interim targets for the mid-2020s. To support the uptake of these vehicles, the Government of Canada has launched both the Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles and Incentives for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Zero-Emission Vehicles Programs.

The federal government is committed to boosting the supply of critical minerals. A Critical Minerals Center of Excellence and targeted research and development will be supported for upstream critical minerals processing and battery precursors and related materials engineering. The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy aims to speed up development of Canada's critical mineral resources and expertise, by adding value to each stage of the development process, further solidifying Canada's global leadership. In addition, the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan envisions a circular economy where mine waste is reprocessed to improve sustainability and derive additional economic value.

Stakeholder perspective: Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad

Operating across southern Ontario, Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad (COIL) is a circular business and innovation accelerator aimed at developing and scaling transformative solutions that will move Canada toward a more resilient, climate-smart economic model. A collaborative project of the City of Guelph, County of Wellington, Innovation Guelph and 10C Shared Space, COIL contains a suite of programs and resources to embed and accelerate circularity across businesses, supply chains and material streams. COIL programming includes: accelerators, incubator, innovation challenges, learning and training curriculums, material flow analyses—just to name a few.

Since launch in 2021, more than 65 organizations have participated in COIL programming; more than 230 new circular collaborations have been supported; more than $750,000 in organization funding and mentorship has been provided to support circular transition; 17 new pieces of Intellectual Property (IP) have been nurtured; and hundreds of tonnes of organic byproducts have been upcycled to new high-value goods. This project is funded by the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario.

Source: Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad