Thank you!

Thank you for sending your letter to Environment and Climate Change Minister Guilbeault on priorities for the new legally binding Global Plastic Treaty.  This upcoming negotiation in November needs to set a cap on the production and consumption of plastic.  It reminds me a lot of the early negotiations on the Montreal Protocol to set reduction quotas on ozone-depleting chemicals – once they were set, the ozone hole over the Antarctic was discovered and countries realized they had been persuaded to do too little by the big corporations involved. Production and consumption phase downs were put in place to end with complete bans on CFCs and other ozone depleting chemicals.

Sure, there’s a lot more research needed on the impacts of plastic pollution but we know already that microplastic is in all of us and most wildlife and causing inflammation. Here’s where governments need to act with precaution.  Thanks to your letter and thousands from other concerned Canadians, we hope precaution will prevail, not corporate profits.

The fourth negotiation will be held in Ottawa at the end of next April.