Mark Schatzker: LCBO's baffling no

New policy's numbers don't add up and may be worse for the environment

It’s official. On Sept. 4, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario will give away its last paper bag. Fifteen years after the country’s largest liquor retailer dropped the axe on plastic bags, the time has come to say goodbye to their paper cousins.

It’s about time, right? The initiative, according to the LCBO, will eliminate the use of nearly 135 million bags every year, saving the equivalent of more than 188,000 trees and diverting 2,665 tonnes from landfill.

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There’s only one problem: Nothing about the new policy makes much sense. The numbers don’t add up, the impact on the environment may be worse and millions of Ontarians will experience bag rage at the government-mandated monopolistic retailer they have no choice but to patronize.

Consider first the claim that eliminating 135 million paper bags will save the equivalent of 188,000 trees. If an average LCBO paper bag weighs 20 grams — that’s the actual weight of a medium-sized LCBO paper bag — then according to the LCBO’s numbers, a typical tree produces a measly 718 paper bags.

Does an entire tree really produce such a measly quantity of bags? And aren’t paper bags supposed to be made from recycled paper?

Most paper is indeed made from recycled material. The LCBO, however, requires bags that can carry heavy bottles. For this reason, it uses “virgin” paper bags, whose stronger fibres are made from pulp derived directly from trees.

How many bags a single tree produces all depends on the size of tree. Some northern boreal forests are populated by runty black spruce and jack pines that don’t yield much paper. A majestic eastern white pine, on the other hand, could produce paper bags by the thousands.

Large trees, however, aren’t generally harvested for paper because they can be sawn into something much more valuable: lumber. The leftover sawdust, bark, wood chips and shavings can and are used to make paper. But the reason we harvest those trees is to fuel our need for two-by-fours and plywood, which means banning paper bags will do little to “save” them.

That’s why the LCBO claims its policy will save the “equivalent” of 188,000 trees. It’s not talking about sprawling stands of towering conifers. It’s talking about theoretical trees. And the smaller your theoretical tree, the more impressive your policy sounds.

Then there is the claim that this initiative will divert 2,665 tonnes of waste from landfill. This is just plain false. The LCBO seems to be assuming nearly every one of its paper bags eventually winds up in landfill. That’s not what happens to paper bags.

Ontarians have been diligent recyclers ever since the Blue Box Program was created 40 years ago. According to Stewardship Ontario, which operates the Blue Box Program, paper packaging (which includes paper bags) is the number one most collected and recycled material, comprising nearly half of what Ontarians recycle.

Pulp fibre can be used five to seven times, after which point it becomes “sludge.” Once upon a time, sludge was, like so much of the waste we produce, buried in landfill. But according to Jay Park, associate professor at the Sustainable Packaging Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, times are changing. “Industry increasingly implements other options,” he says, “such as composting and fertilizer.”

Sustana Fiber, a manufacturer of recycled fibre and paper based in De Pere, Wis., operates a mill in Breakeyville, Que., that doesn’t send any of its sludge to landfill. Seventy-five per cent becomes fertilizer, 20 per cent becomes animal bedding and the rest is used for “cogen,” a form of recycled energy.

The bigger question is, why does the LCBO suddenly have it in for paper bags?

Up until recently, it was proudly and eccentrically pro-paper bag. Its clerks would sheath every bottle of wine or whisky in its own cozy little sack. The LCBO’s sustainability partner, Tree Canada, apparently hasn’t received the news that paper bags are forbidden. One of the “family-friendly tree activities” listed on its website instructs children to “bring some paper bags to the park.”

In place of paper bags, LCBO customers can request an eight-pack carrier made out — I’m not making this up — cardboard, which is to say, trees. They also have the option of buying a reusable plastic bag made from recycled water bottles manufactured in Vietnam.

It all sounds very nice. Instead of razing pristine Canadian forests to feed our voracious paper bag addiction, we can recycle a waste product into something useful and everlasting.

Reality, unfortunately, tells an uglier story. Vietnam is an enormous producer of plastic products whose environmental record leaves much to be desired. Poor villagers sort discarded plastic from developed countries and often discard what can’t be recycled in dumpsites or on roadsides. In many rural areas, waste is simply dumped on bare land or tossed into water bodies. According to a study published in Science in 2015, as much as 730,000 tonnes of plastic waste becomes marine litter in Vietnam each year.

Is this really the country where Canadians should turn to clean up their environmental act?

In theory, it could be. If we actually reused reusable bags — over and over and over — then with time their environmental footprint would shrink to minuscule proportions.

That, alas, is not what happens. Canadian closets, garages and basements are stuffed with untold numbers of reusable bags. I counted more than 50 in my basement, some cloth but the majority plastic. A friend counted more than 60, and another refused to look but is confident he’s well past a hundred. These tumour-like blobs of misspent virtue grow until they are guiltily stuffed into the garbage and the cycle begins anew.

The Canadian forestry industry, furthermore, isn’t the environmental atrocity people imagine it to be. Each year, just 0.2 per cent of Canada’s forested land is harvested — a small fraction of what is lost to fires and insect infestation. For every tree harvested, another is planted.

There are jobs behind all those trees. Canadian Kraft Paper, one of the country’s largest producers of high-quality virgin paper, conducts its forestry management with a company co-owned by seven Swampy Cree First Nations. (The forest products industry is one of the largest employers of Indigenous people in Canada.)

Is there a deeper motive behind this baffling policy?

My guess is money. The LCBO’s revenue growth has been sluggish as of late. Since 2019, the salary of the LCBO’s president and CEO has risen by a whopping $8. (Not enough to buy three reusable plastic bags.) If the LCBO can convert just five per cent of its free paper bags into non-reusable plastic bag purchases, that will bring in nearly $20 million in additional revenue.

If money is the problem, here’s a better idea. Keep using paper bags. But instead of giving them away, sell them. Make it hurt — charge 25 cents, no, 50 cents! Maybe then people will remember to bring a reusable bag.

And if they don’t, a little paper never hurt anyone.

National Post

Mark Schatzker is the author of “Steak” and “The Dorito Effect.”

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