2024 Reports 1 to 5 of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to the Parliament of CanadaUnclear whether federal plastic waste-reduction activities will eliminate all plastic waste by 2030

Ottawa, 30 April 2024—A report released today by Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry V. DeMarco found that waste-reduction activities under the federal government’s zero plastic waste initiative were achieving good results. However, key federal organizations, led by Environment and Climate Change Canada, lacked information and had yet to measure their progress to show to what extent their efforts were contributing to the Canada‑wide Strategy on Zero Plastic Waste.

The audit found that 11 of the 16 waste-reduction activities examined were delivering good results and were strongly aligned with Canada’s priorities on zero plastic waste. For instance, Fisheries and Oceans Canada funded many projects that were removing abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear from the water. The remaining 5 activities were still under development. For example, Environment and Climate Change Canada was developing a federal public plastics registry to standardize data around plastics and to increase information available to Canadians.

However, important information was missing from the initiative’s performance measurement framework, which affected Environment and Climate Change Canada’s ability to measure how activities contributed to the Canada‑wide goal. For example, information on the amount of plastic waste that is released into the environment was incomplete, and there was a 3‑year delay in Statistics Canada’s data on plastic waste. As a result, decision makers did not know whether they were on the right track or needed to take corrective actions to increase the chances that waste-reduction activities would meet the 2030 goal.

“Successfully reducing plastic pollution requires the collaboration of the federal government with many others, including provinces, territories, municipalities, and the private sector,” said Mr. DeMarco. “With so many partners in play, robust tracking systems are critically important.”

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The 2024 Reports of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Report 3—Zero Plastic Waste, is available on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada website.

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