The amount of plastic Canadians waste every year is staggering and a dozen ocean conservancy and environmental groups want the feds to do something about it.

Every year in this country, 2.93 million metric tonnes of plastic wind up in landfills or being burned, that’s a whopping 91 percent of all plastic produced.

Spokesperson for the 12 groups Lily Woodbury, says a nine percent recycle rate just isn’t enough and thinks it’s up to the Federal Government to take action. “There’s not a domestic market for recycled plastics, so our plastics are virgin plastics.”

“Whereas if we had recycle content standard for example requiring that products have twenty five percent recycled content, this would create a demand for it and that would also lead to an increase.”

According to Woodbury, Canada’s rivers, lakes and oceans receive an additional 29,000 metric tonnes of plastic litter – the equivalent of 9.7 billion coffee cup lids.

This morning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government wants to eliminate single use plastics by 2021 although there is no concrete plan as of yet.

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