Local businesses cut foam to go green

By Kelvin Chan

Vancouver businesses work to meet city’s new environmental rules by trimming utensils

Dr. Phil Austin says plastics and foam create a problem for organisms. (Photo by Kelvin Chan)

As Vancouver businesses scramble to adapt to new waste policies, one business is constantly thinking of ways to help the environment and the community.

Jaclyn Chang, a co-owner of Buckets Ice Cream, is adapting to the changes more easily than other businesses. They never used single-use plastics or foam from the start with the exception of plastic cups for ice cream floats for people on the road.

“It is important for us to ensure that there are waste management facilities and accessible infrastructure to support alternative solutions so we spend a considerable amount of time doing research before selecting and switching products,” said Chang. “We also encourage our customers to bring in their own cups and containers and are happy to serve our ice cream and beverages in their own containers to reduce waste altogether.”

The City of Vancouver aims to reach its goal of achieving zero waste by 2040. Their first step is to eliminate foam, followed by a ban on plastic straws and limits on plastic cutlery in April. The city will ban plastic bags and start charging a fee of 15 cents for paper bags and $1 for reusable shopping bags in 2021. The fee will increase in 2022.

Approximately 330 million pieces of cutlery ended up in the landfill in 2018 and a large portion were chopsticks, the City of Vancouver reports. They state that nearly 50 per cent of public garbage bins contained take-out containers and disposable cups.

Dr. Phil Austin, an atmospheric science professor at the University of British Columbia, says the ban does not have an impact on climate change, but on ecological change instead.

“The world is not our sewer,” said Austin. “Now that there are seven billion people on the planet, we’ve hit the limits of what we can do with our waste. We’ve run out of room.”

The world should be reducing waste and be following Vancouver’s path, said Austin.

Dallas Strong, a UBC student, says that he’s strongly in favour of trimming the use of plastic.

“Even when I do use plastics, if I have a Ziploc for crackers or something, I’m not going to throw that out because there’s no liquid or anything,” said Strong. “I have Ziplocs that I use for a week or two, [instead] of throwing it out after one use.”

He’s slowly reducing his plastic use in the past five years when he became more aware of it on the news.

“Whenever you’re reducing something, you’re not going to make it worse,” said Strong. “We can’t rely on the government to develop technologies that will save us, we [have] to start now and do as much as we can to reverse it.”

Austin said that he’s been told by another UBC professor that at this rate, we would need four planet Earths to meet our needs.

“We’ve only got one, so that means sooner rather than later, we are essentially done,” said Austin.

The atmospheric science associate professor wants to see a long-term solution moving forward and believes that all municipalities should set goals like what Vancouver is doing.

“We just have to recognize that we live in a world with limits and that you actually don’t have some sort of magical hole that you can dump things down that just make them disappear,” said Austin.

He believes we have to act soon, otherwise catastrophes will occur, such as the Vancouver airport going under water or the flooding of False Creek.

The family business led by Chang, her younger sister and her friend has considered using reusable tableware and cutlery, but elected to use paper bowls and wooden cutlery instead.

Buckets Ice Cream also developed a program where they would ask customers to return their glass jars back to the company when they’re done and the patron would receive a small refund in return. The glass jars would then be washed and reused.

“In general, eco-friendly options tend to have a higher cost, [so] paper straws and paper cups are more costly than plastic ones,” said Chang. “We are willing to invest in more eco-friendly products as a way to reduce our impact on the environment.”

Ever since she was little, she followed her mother’s footsteps and started reusing containers and bags so it was an easy transition for her. She usually shops at farmers’ markets where they don’t use foam and plastic.

“I carry a reusable container with cutlery, a fabric bag, a fabric napkin and a metal straw with me all the time,” said Chang. “I also carry a thermos and water bottle for coffee and water, [so] I follow a general rule that if I don't have a coffee mug with me, I won't purchase coffee to go.”