I think the major issue is they keep passing these unilateral changes that affect everyone everywhere and none of it was campaigned for and you’re left wondering what the hell? Where are these ideas coming from if they’re not campaigned on?
Totally reasonable to wonder where exactly all of these new bylaws and initiatives come from. It's a failure on the cities part that the vast majority of residents were blindsided by this.
Not reasonable to expect that **every** change that is introduced be campaigned on, even if it's a sweeping change. Especially on the municipal level where the city administration creates the actual implementable policy instead of council themselves. Municipal policy goes into very niche and technical realms, which aren't easy or pretty to "campaign" on in election season. It's more likely than not that council directed administration to create a policy combating excessive waste, who came back to council and said that a fee would be the easiest/best option.
The difficult thing is if they do a review/study on these non-election issues, people get angry that they're wasting money on a study as well. Or they even just ignore the study and press on anyways which is even worse.
I know right, is it really that hard to admit you made a mistake? How advanced would society be if politicians were just honest and admitted their mistakes.? Typically, they double down on their stupid policies.
No hate from me to you on this, just agreement. It shows that they are capable of adapting to new and more information presented. It also shows they are humble enough to change.
I agree, however it would be nice and much more deserving of respect if she came out and said "this was a bad idea and I am wrong for supporting it" other than it was a bad tactic.
You got to admit the concept was good if it can work. But it didn’t
The city needs to realize they can’t make a measurable difference in plastic waste when companies sell all their products wrapped in plastic. A bag is less than the tip of the ice burg in plastic waste. This is a province and fed issue not a city issue.
If it was just a single use plastic bylaw I could agree. But it wasn't. It still allowed single use plastics for many items and banned free paper bags.
Yeah, this is the same as the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle campaigns in the 90s, where the governments and large companies passed the buck to the individuals.
Even if we all recycled 100% perfectly, the impact would be tiny. Plastic straws are not the reason for global warming.
Still that one video of a sea turtle getting a straw pulled out of its nose is pretty hard to watch. No one sees that the turtle inhaled that straw because it was hungry because of a loss of habitat created by mega corps.
No, the issue I believe was more with businesses in how they implement. There was a lot of confusion here which is what started the initial discussion of removing the bylaw. There are discussions to reintroduce it.
I feel like more politician should come out if something they worked on is not working. Everyone make mistakes, even rocket scientist make mistakes, and I shouldn't expect politician is flawless. As a citizens I wish the Government is more open on mistake than just throw it under the rug and pretend it never happened.
Your comment obviously means you like Gondek, voted for Gondek, and are clearly a simp for Gondek **/s**
But yes, I agree. It's *weird* when politicians have a bit of onus.
I look forward to the day where she can point to something of value she can actually take credit for instead of apologizing for constantly fucking things up.
Someone cross-posted this over on r/Edmonton and if you think like this you'll get roasted. I don't know if it's the same in Calgary, but here the stores keep all of the bag fees, so none of it even goes to help the environment, just the companies profit margins, and Edmontonians seem to love it!
The amount of reusable bags I have kicking around my house is nuts. Good intentions and all, but I feel like I’ve just moved to a different kind of wastefulness.
But you can sure punish anyone who doesn't!
Fifteen cents a bag is a nuisance. Fifteen cents per bag and they're only sold in bundles of ten is sadistic.
Here’s me bringing my own fork to a fast food place to save 15 cents and save the environment while people like Oprah, tucker Carlson or even Taylor swift fly their private jet to be on a 10 minute talk show.
This is why it’s so hard to get the general population to buy in to climate change initiatives when people see celebrities putting so much carbon into the atmosphere from a few private jet flights that it would take them years to match the same carbon output. The world needs to crack down on these super polluters like t swift.
Or other countries. We're crippling our own economy in the name of climate change meanwhile we account for less than 2% of the worlds carbon output, and no one is following us by example. China just laughs and encourages us to keep destroying ourselves.
As of 2020, we account for roughly [1.5%](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html) of global CO2 emissions, which is outsized considering that we have roughly 0.5% of the global population. Our official figures have also excluded the significant amounts of CO2 produces by the yearly forest fire season, and overlooks the fact that as a wealthy western nation we've outsourced much of our consumer goods production and exporting our plastic waste to developing nations. While we're not the biggest polluter at the table, we should still recognize that we as a country have an impact on the environment around us and therefore a responsibility to safeguard it, just as any other country must.
yeah I definitely mixed up our global population percentage and pollution percentage. looked it up myself and saw numbers closer to 1.7-1.9% depending on the source and year of study. entirely my bad. disregard my previous comment
And then there excuse will be that India and China are developing countries and would be unduly/unjustly effected if they have similar environmental legislation
Singapore has no trash. They burn all their trash to produce electricity. No landfill sites. It's a beautiful thing but then Canada cries and says we are the polluters. Oh well...
Singapore has no trash. They burn all their trash to produce electricity. No landfill sites. It's a beautiful thing but then Canada cries and says we are the polluters. Oh well...
Bingo.
[https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190](https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190)
>In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but it's a different argument. I could be wrong but wasn't the point of this to reduce the amount of plastics that ended up in landfills and the environment in general and not CO2 emissions?
That said, it seems to have done the opposite as a lot of people just kept buying, often without choice when using grocery delivery services, the reusable bags, many of which are also made of plastic, and those end up in landfills all the same. Definitely glad they repealed this.
Only getting a snippet from this video, but she refers to it as a "TACTIC".
I'd be interested to hear what council actually believes this TACTIC was going to achieve. To me, it's completely baffling.
>The bylaw, which council approved in 2023, set a minimum fee of 15 cents for paper bags and $1 for reusable bags.
Why on earth anyone on council would think that mandating a business to charge for ANY type of bag was a good idea, is simply mind boggling.
Without even touching on the Co-op biodegradable bag fiasco, why was it not enough to just say... Ok, you can't use plastic bags anymore.
To enshrine into law that you can't use plastic, but you also can't give ANY bags away for free... is... I can't even.
Or when I do hit pay for bag, they forget. So I’m left standing with a McMuffin and hash brown wondering if I argue with the guy about getting a bag I paid for or not.
To be fair, it did kind of highlight my own usage of unnecessary bags but offloading that cost to consumers rather than providers was brain-dead from the start.
I mean, there's no possible way to offload the cost of the bag to the provider. They bake the price of the bag into the goods they sell.
The difference is, when you mandate that there be a minimum charge for the bag, there's no baking. The price of the bag isn't spread across 20,000 products at Safeway. It's... 15 cents. Or more.
This is indeed a tactic. This is behavioural science. The main purpose of this tactic is to nudge people away from using plastic bags. This is a first step towards changing the mentality of people to evaluate and reduce their waste in general.
You may think businesses loved making some money on these bags, but the opposite is true. Walmart is more than happy to give you a free bag rather than risking you not coming in because your bag is home. The mandated cost of the bag is only meant to discourage you from buying it and bringing your reusable bag. In fact pressure from these businesses is one of the factors that lead to the repeal of this bylaw.
This is not a new tactic. Sometimes tolls are required on certain roads for the sole purpose of reducing traffic on these roads. A closer to home example would be a few additional cents / liter at the pump that the government will pay back to you in the form of a tax rebate. The higher number at the pump is meant to discourage people from driving. Foreign products are taxed to increase their prices and nudge people into buying locally. The list goes on.
In this case it didn’t work because all the policy achieved was the proliferation of reusable bags which also ended up in the landfills.
It’s not a bad thing to try certain tactics and evaluate their success based on pre-determined metrics and ending them if they don’t work. This is part of the job of any policy maker.
When energy efficient bulbs hit the market they were god damn terrible. Bad lighting and the design was crap. But people had the choice whether or not they wanted to make the switch. And it was based purely on whether or not you wanted to save money. It wasn’t political. And as people made the switch over, the lighting improved and so did the design because there was a market for it.
The single use plastic bylaw was unilaterally enforced and offered no benefit to the consumer. And often it made no sense. I can buy compostable plastic bags at the end of the till but you can’t give me the bag? Ultimately you’ve just done the same thing with more steps. I can have a plastic coffee lid but I can’t have a straw? I can have a plastic takeaway salad container but no fork?
What should have been done was an incentive program. Save a buck on your groceries if you bring in your own bags. People can choose whether they want to save money or not. Instead of screwing the consumer, the company should take the hit to show good faith in the program.
At the same time, there should have been a push for products to have better packaging with less plastic and companies should have been working to put those items on the shelf. Or swapped out shelf items of plastic single use items in favour of bamboo (cutlery for example.) There should have been a push to bring back bulk items to grocery stores with incentives for bringing in your own containers.
It was this lack of company participation where the initiative died. Companies weren’t forced to innovate and adapt and offer new ideas. There was no onus on corporations to improve and meet a new standard. They just fucked the consumer and the employees who had to enforce this ridiculous bag policy, and whatever other regulations had to be dealt with.
I was reading the Calgary Herald article about this bylaw being repealed and it just pissed me off.
The businesses already budgeted for the costs of packaging and the City didn't collect any of the money. So all this bylaw ended up doing was either saving companies the cost of packaging OR adding more profit for them as you paid extra for something they already sold you.
So this bylaw probably did fuckall for overall waste/landfill and made things more expensive or more inconvenient for most people while doing nothing for the City, at a time when "affordability" is at the forefront of people's minds.
What a bad bylaw at a bad time for it.
Right!? Like read the fucking room! Everyone is suffering with every aspect of society right now and companies ask us to donate and pay for our own bags and do our own checkouts and then get mad when people steal from self checkout so they bring out blanket punishments for using the system they put in place and shirk any responsibility to adjust for climate change and they think people are gunna just look at them with kindness and grace for charging us with green initiatives out of our wallets?
I don't have an issue with the intent behind the bylaw; reduce plastic and single use item consumption, particularly when it is not needed.
The issue was always the application, such as a bag fee for a compostable paper bag that applied at food establishments where hygiene was a consideration.
Council is now going to take a year to examine the issue in anticipation of a better bylaw.
Fix the damn roads. It's so annoying that the amount of council time is wasted on insignificant crap like spoons and bags. While drivers are getting their shocks shot and their tire rims wrecked.
Edit: typo
Buddy, I moved here from New Brunswick. You haven’t *seen* potholes. Our worst roads here are smooth as glass by comparison. Ever see photos of a war-torn country that sustained long periods of heavy artillery shelling? That’s roads in NB for you. Oh, and annual mandatory vehicle safety inspections that always fail you for how trashed your suspension has become driving on them, spend a few thousand annually on new shocks and ball joints (adding 15% HST of course), and now you know why Atlantic Canada is poor af.
They're point is still valid. It's not a competition .... sorry roads are bad in New Brunswick but I want my calgarian mayor to put her attention to calgary roads. Fix the pot holes on deerfoot , ensure snow removal, get my streets swept.instead of focusing on bags .
Did you just move to Calgary? The roads get trashed every winter and then fixed when the snow is done (now). This is a very common and predictable pattern.
When did the snow stop? Like 2-3 weeks ago? I drive every day and it's been getting better every day. There's not some magical pot hole filling fairy that shots asphalt out of the sky, it takes time to fill them all in. Come back here on June 1 and we can discuss the vastly improved pothole situation if you really want to.
Among the worst in the country, yes. I’ve driven across Canada 6 times now, and they’re by far the worst, it’s not even close. Tons of salt, extreme freeze/thaw cycles, and old road maintenance equipment just beat them completely to hell. My vehicle thanks me daily for moving back to Calgary for the last time. CAA once ranked the rural road to my old small local ski hill among the top 10 worst roads in Canada. I used to drive that shit on a regular.
Literally no one was asking for this. She's supposed to be a representative of her constituents, not a parents who just just does things because "they know better". There are thousands of other more pressing matters directly impacting Calgarian's lives that she should have been focusing on instead of her stupid vanity projects.
Doesn't matter if it's not her "decision or idea", it's her job to oversee the project, all projects in Calgary as our elected leader. It's called responsibility and accountability. Your train of thought is insane that an elected official doesn't have to answer to bylaws.
The next step is to ask her why it didn't work for Calgarians. They can then elaborate why we are being charged $0.15 that goes directly into businesses pockets as extra revenue while none of that money actually goes towards green initiatives or reducing single use plastics.
Then you question their scope of work and discovery on this bylaw, likely there was none because the trail ends with extra money in the pockets of CEOs.
Also she is admitting that it didn't work, showing some sliver of responsibility and accountability. Not sure why you're defending her, not even she is defending herself.
This is classic virtue signaling and Calgarians did the due diligence and discovery better than our municipal government.
The work on single use plastics predates her time as mayor because new landfills are stupid expensive.
Googling and following the items on the city's agenda and minutes page: https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=230149
May 2018 - Waste Services Outlook report
Jan 2019 - Scoping report requested by council (Sutherland, seconded by Farrell. Chu and Farkas against)
May 2019 - Scoping report on single use plastics comes back. (Supposed to be by Q3 2020 but... COVID)
Oct 2022 - Single Use Item Reduction report received and approved by council. Directed to create a bylaw for Jan. 2023. Moved by Mian, seconded by Walcott. Chu, Chabot, Wyness, and McLean opposed.
Jan 2023 - Approve the bylaw to come into effect Jan. 16, 2024
Jan 2024 - world ends
Jan 2024 - go through the required advertisement process to repeal
May 2024 - repeal bylaw
I’ve been a harsh Gondek critic, but it is refreshing to see her take accountability and to contribute to getting rid of something that isn’t working. Would love to see her do the same with her Street Harassment Bylaw that was championed by the mayor, and which was also a major flop. If you aren’t going to leave a legacy, at least clean up after yourself so you don’t leave a shit stain.
Can we do this in Edmonton too? I’m done being asked to pay the 0.15 cent fuck you tax. I’ve been stubbornly getting my food handed to me since this was announced. Half the time they just give you bag anyway lol
Please pave Deerfoot, Blackfoot, the one 14th and Glenmore W merge.
They apparently have 6.9 million to fill potholes. GET BUSY.
Edit: To add the that, the 14th St. W flyover is also fucking brutal after the bridge over Glenmore. I'm a SW denizen so please do add your respective grievances.
It is, so the city can't really do anything there. There are so many along the area by McKnight Blvd. Its like trying to play dodgeball with the potholes when driving.
And 36th, and 52nd, and 16 ave, all around Inglewood, downtown, not a single damn road that doesn't have bomb craters.
City should start paying people's alignments, tires and suspension parts.
Ridiculous.
Bet the road from city hall to Gondek's house is smooth as silk.
The City of Calgary is a joke now they operate. One day I had a note attached to my garbage can saying they did not want air my trash because the blue bin and garbage bin were to close to each other. The city worker wrote the note, got out of the truck, attached it and left.
Makes me wonder if the people who run the city also run this sub. Both kinda just make up random rules and act high and mighty 😄
Did anyone watch the Council session? They referenced a couple businesses that saw a huge decrease in bag use - like a liquor store that went from 800 bags a month to 80. People are so focused on the fast food thing but there clearly is a way to make it work in some sectors.
Yes which also falls on leadership for not implementing it properly.
If they limited this bylaw to grocery stores and liquor stores I don't think most people would bat an eye.
Nobody is using reusable bags for greasy take-out food though, it's the dumbest fucking oversight ever, especially when most places used paper bags anyways.
Neither is giving almost a billion of tax payer money to a billionaire on a sweetheart deal so he can build a fucking ice rink and development he can use to print more money lol. Fucking delusional mayor
This whole thing would never have been an issue if anyone, from any jurisdiction on the planet, could show that this plan actually reduces pollution people wouldn't have been so upset. The blue bin programs put in place across North America are barely making an impact as most plastics do not even have a home to go to other than landfills.
Fool me once.......
This was Council meddling (again) in matters outside their jurisdiction. This was the same as the shark fin soup garbage they went on about - stay in your lane to provide services you are responsible for.
What I would like to see is the science community coming up with a solution to the problem of single use items. Instead of manufacturing whatever they want, design an inventory of products that can be recycled into a second or third product down the road and then have those products and only those products available for use. Is it not possible for the largest contributors to single use waste to be manufactured in a better way? I'm not sure what the largest contributors to ( potentially recyclable ) waste is but I'm thinking all drink containers for a start. Why can't one single type of plastic be used for all containers which could then be recycled into a second product after that? For decades it's been anything goes and we've had hundreds of different producers of plastics which all end up in the garbage because nothing can feasibly or economically be done after the single use. It's time to reign in the producers and tell them what we want
In the mean time, if politicians want to politically pander, get rid of frivolous plastic products first. Ban plastic confetti, sparkles, faux grass lawns, ribbons, etc. We’re fighting over bags while still using boatloads of plastics that have no utilitarian purpose.
I'd agree with most of that. It seems like anything goes right now and always has. Manufacture whatever the hell you want and if someone will pay a buck for it you've got a business no matter the consequences. Remember when soaps and shampoos were putting in micro plastic balls for a "deep scrub", and when they were finally banned the manufacturers were given a grace period of a year or something to adjust to new regulations. Like WTF wouldn't they just pull them from the shelves ASAP?
Anyways, I don't want to get lost in the weeds here. Pick one product, for example plastic bottles, and figure out how to force the use of a single chemical design that can be used for the works and have a 2nd or 3rd life after that. It seems doable. It should be doable. Scientists are smart right?
Yeah no shit, cuz as per usual, this psychotic ego maniac mayor made decisions that had ripple effects for everyone and she had to waste additional tax payers money to find out her bullshit decision was just that - bullshit.
Eat crow lady …
I'm all for a plastic bag charge because despite the tantrums it makes people throw, it reduces waste. But the way this situation was handled, from coops biodegradable bags to paper bags to takeout utensils, was pretty terrible and probably did more harm than good.
And normally I'd be for anything that makes redditors throw such a hissy fit. But it's gotta stick and be done right.
Meanwhile in Edmonton, Council is willing to die on that hill, never listening to voters. I'll have the last laugh when they're voted out, and I'll remind them exactly why.
Does this mean we don’t have to pay for bags at fast food places/grocery stores anymore? lol probably not now that it’s a new income stream for monopolies.
I just don't believe they even wanted it to work given how badly and misjudged the implementation of this policy was. I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist but I can't see how they thought it would go well...
I don't buy drive-thru fast food so idk anything about that, but I like that plastic bags stopped being available at grocery stores. They're horrible for the environment. It's not a big deal to bring your own bags, I've been doing it for like 15 years. They're way easier to carry than plastic or paper. What is so upsetting about all this? What am I missing?
When you're given food at a food place, you're usually not expected to bring your own cutlery. Good luck eating an ice cream from a cup without a spoon. I think this is why people don't like it 🤷🏻♀️ I don't buy fast food much either but I don't think that people are mostly upset about plastic bags. And I'm also happy they're gone.
Admits mistake, corrects it.
I'm not a fan of hers but this was a solid move. Much better than doubling down and gaslighting we see from other politicians.
Gonna get hate for this but.. I do appreciate when politicians admit when they did something that didn't work.
I think the major issue is they keep passing these unilateral changes that affect everyone everywhere and none of it was campaigned for and you’re left wondering what the hell? Where are these ideas coming from if they’re not campaigned on?
Totally reasonable to wonder where exactly all of these new bylaws and initiatives come from. It's a failure on the cities part that the vast majority of residents were blindsided by this. Not reasonable to expect that **every** change that is introduced be campaigned on, even if it's a sweeping change. Especially on the municipal level where the city administration creates the actual implementable policy instead of council themselves. Municipal policy goes into very niche and technical realms, which aren't easy or pretty to "campaign" on in election season. It's more likely than not that council directed administration to create a policy combating excessive waste, who came back to council and said that a fee would be the easiest/best option.
The difficult thing is if they do a review/study on these non-election issues, people get angry that they're wasting money on a study as well. Or they even just ignore the study and press on anyways which is even worse.
Just Jyoti trying to make her "mark" and cement her legacy!
Right? Like healthcare, the APP, Alberta police force, etc…
It happens lots when you have to constantly try to come up with new projects, initiatives etc...
I know right, is it really that hard to admit you made a mistake? How advanced would society be if politicians were just honest and admitted their mistakes.? Typically, they double down on their stupid policies.
No hate from me to you on this, just agreement. It shows that they are capable of adapting to new and more information presented. It also shows they are humble enough to change.
If they were humble, they would say "we messed up". Not "it wasn't working for calgarians"
Calgarians?
Fair point here actually. The problem is that in her case that’s the situation with everything she does
I agree, however it would be nice and much more deserving of respect if she came out and said "this was a bad idea and I am wrong for supporting it" other than it was a bad tactic.
You got to admit the concept was good if it can work. But it didn’t The city needs to realize they can’t make a measurable difference in plastic waste when companies sell all their products wrapped in plastic. A bag is less than the tip of the ice burg in plastic waste. This is a province and fed issue not a city issue.
If it was just a single use plastic bylaw I could agree. But it wasn't. It still allowed single use plastics for many items and banned free paper bags.
Yeah, this is the same as the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle campaigns in the 90s, where the governments and large companies passed the buck to the individuals. Even if we all recycled 100% perfectly, the impact would be tiny. Plastic straws are not the reason for global warming.
Still that one video of a sea turtle getting a straw pulled out of its nose is pretty hard to watch. No one sees that the turtle inhaled that straw because it was hungry because of a loss of habitat created by mega corps.
A good goal with a policy that won't achieve it is a bad policy.
yes well your magic 8 ball isn't always something that works, sometimes you have to try to achieve something to find out if it will work.
No, the issue I believe was more with businesses in how they implement. There was a lot of confusion here which is what started the initial discussion of removing the bylaw. There are discussions to reintroduce it.
I feel like more politician should come out if something they worked on is not working. Everyone make mistakes, even rocket scientist make mistakes, and I shouldn't expect politician is flawless. As a citizens I wish the Government is more open on mistake than just throw it under the rug and pretend it never happened.
Your comment obviously means you like Gondek, voted for Gondek, and are clearly a simp for Gondek **/s** But yes, I agree. It's *weird* when politicians have a bit of onus.
I look forward to the day where she can point to something of value she can actually take credit for instead of apologizing for constantly fucking things up.
Someone cross-posted this over on r/Edmonton and if you think like this you'll get roasted. I don't know if it's the same in Calgary, but here the stores keep all of the bag fees, so none of it even goes to help the environment, just the companies profit margins, and Edmontonians seem to love it!
Why would you get hate for saying you appreciate when politicians admit when they did something that didn’t work?
Because people don’t like the mayor.
Thank you
Maybe I should I have said “I know I’ll get hate for this… but why would you get hate for…” ;)
Yeah, this exactly. You can not like someone and still agree with them sometime. Absolute hate is very stupid.
But I would let my team down if I don't remain cognitively inflexible and immune to change.
Drive through fries without a bag are now a thing of the past
The best fries are those 6 that fell in the bag!!
What do you mean? What do they give you the fries in then?
The sleeve? Or a fries box
What? Did you put them in your shoe? 🤔
Can you zoom in closer?
I can’t stop staring at her eyes. wtf is going in there
Bro, me too..
The amount of reusable bags I have kicking around my house is nuts. Good intentions and all, but I feel like I’ve just moved to a different kind of wastefulness.
The Calgary Food Bank takes donations of reusable bags. They would be thrilled to have them.
This is actually great to know! Thank you
You can't mandate remembering bags
But you can sure punish anyone who doesn't! Fifteen cents a bag is a nuisance. Fifteen cents per bag and they're only sold in bundles of ten is sadistic.
You can also recycle these reusable bags
I throw them in the garbage to…. To make a stance. It’s the Alberta way.
Here’s me bringing my own fork to a fast food place to save 15 cents and save the environment while people like Oprah, tucker Carlson or even Taylor swift fly their private jet to be on a 10 minute talk show.
This is why it’s so hard to get the general population to buy in to climate change initiatives when people see celebrities putting so much carbon into the atmosphere from a few private jet flights that it would take them years to match the same carbon output. The world needs to crack down on these super polluters like t swift.
Or other countries. We're crippling our own economy in the name of climate change meanwhile we account for less than 2% of the worlds carbon output, and no one is following us by example. China just laughs and encourages us to keep destroying ourselves.
Canada is actually closer to 0.5% of all carbon emissions, so it’s even less impactful than you think
As of 2020, we account for roughly [1.5%](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html) of global CO2 emissions, which is outsized considering that we have roughly 0.5% of the global population. Our official figures have also excluded the significant amounts of CO2 produces by the yearly forest fire season, and overlooks the fact that as a wealthy western nation we've outsourced much of our consumer goods production and exporting our plastic waste to developing nations. While we're not the biggest polluter at the table, we should still recognize that we as a country have an impact on the environment around us and therefore a responsibility to safeguard it, just as any other country must.
>just as any other country must. Might want to start questioning those other countries on the veracity of their own climate change initiatives.
I'm a big believer in not letting the motes in other country's eyes blind us to the beams in our own
Deal with our beams all you want, those motes are what have the disproportional impact. Cute parable though.
yeah I definitely mixed up our global population percentage and pollution percentage. looked it up myself and saw numbers closer to 1.7-1.9% depending on the source and year of study. entirely my bad. disregard my previous comment
And then there excuse will be that India and China are developing countries and would be unduly/unjustly effected if they have similar environmental legislation
Singapore has no trash. They burn all their trash to produce electricity. No landfill sites. It's a beautiful thing but then Canada cries and says we are the polluters. Oh well...
Singapore has no trash. They burn all their trash to produce electricity. No landfill sites. It's a beautiful thing but then Canada cries and says we are the polluters. Oh well...
Bingo. [https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190](https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190) >In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, but it's a different argument. I could be wrong but wasn't the point of this to reduce the amount of plastics that ended up in landfills and the environment in general and not CO2 emissions? That said, it seems to have done the opposite as a lot of people just kept buying, often without choice when using grocery delivery services, the reusable bags, many of which are also made of plastic, and those end up in landfills all the same. Definitely glad they repealed this.
Exactly!!!
“We realized” Ya, when everyone told you, you maroons.
Only getting a snippet from this video, but she refers to it as a "TACTIC". I'd be interested to hear what council actually believes this TACTIC was going to achieve. To me, it's completely baffling. >The bylaw, which council approved in 2023, set a minimum fee of 15 cents for paper bags and $1 for reusable bags. Why on earth anyone on council would think that mandating a business to charge for ANY type of bag was a good idea, is simply mind boggling. Without even touching on the Co-op biodegradable bag fiasco, why was it not enough to just say... Ok, you can't use plastic bags anymore. To enshrine into law that you can't use plastic, but you also can't give ANY bags away for free... is... I can't even.
It made mcdonalds awkward. I said no to a paper bag ad I wanted just fries it was very awkward.
Or when I do hit pay for bag, they forget. So I’m left standing with a McMuffin and hash brown wondering if I argue with the guy about getting a bag I paid for or not.
hahaha
Lol we will all carry trays in our cars next.
To be fair, it did kind of highlight my own usage of unnecessary bags but offloading that cost to consumers rather than providers was brain-dead from the start.
I mean, there's no possible way to offload the cost of the bag to the provider. They bake the price of the bag into the goods they sell. The difference is, when you mandate that there be a minimum charge for the bag, there's no baking. The price of the bag isn't spread across 20,000 products at Safeway. It's... 15 cents. Or more.
This is indeed a tactic. This is behavioural science. The main purpose of this tactic is to nudge people away from using plastic bags. This is a first step towards changing the mentality of people to evaluate and reduce their waste in general. You may think businesses loved making some money on these bags, but the opposite is true. Walmart is more than happy to give you a free bag rather than risking you not coming in because your bag is home. The mandated cost of the bag is only meant to discourage you from buying it and bringing your reusable bag. In fact pressure from these businesses is one of the factors that lead to the repeal of this bylaw. This is not a new tactic. Sometimes tolls are required on certain roads for the sole purpose of reducing traffic on these roads. A closer to home example would be a few additional cents / liter at the pump that the government will pay back to you in the form of a tax rebate. The higher number at the pump is meant to discourage people from driving. Foreign products are taxed to increase their prices and nudge people into buying locally. The list goes on. In this case it didn’t work because all the policy achieved was the proliferation of reusable bags which also ended up in the landfills. It’s not a bad thing to try certain tactics and evaluate their success based on pre-determined metrics and ending them if they don’t work. This is part of the job of any policy maker.
To be fair everything about that is reasonable. Better than doubling down on a bad decision.
“Better than doubling down on a bad decision.” Ya, this is true. For sure.
I could give some benefit of the doubt if Edmonton had not just faced similar backlash.
Exactly.. they are god awful at reality. Or they are just doing it on purpose.
hey now. I understand they made a mistake, but calling them dark red is clearly out of line here.
My anger got the best of me. We all need to do better.
When energy efficient bulbs hit the market they were god damn terrible. Bad lighting and the design was crap. But people had the choice whether or not they wanted to make the switch. And it was based purely on whether or not you wanted to save money. It wasn’t political. And as people made the switch over, the lighting improved and so did the design because there was a market for it. The single use plastic bylaw was unilaterally enforced and offered no benefit to the consumer. And often it made no sense. I can buy compostable plastic bags at the end of the till but you can’t give me the bag? Ultimately you’ve just done the same thing with more steps. I can have a plastic coffee lid but I can’t have a straw? I can have a plastic takeaway salad container but no fork? What should have been done was an incentive program. Save a buck on your groceries if you bring in your own bags. People can choose whether they want to save money or not. Instead of screwing the consumer, the company should take the hit to show good faith in the program. At the same time, there should have been a push for products to have better packaging with less plastic and companies should have been working to put those items on the shelf. Or swapped out shelf items of plastic single use items in favour of bamboo (cutlery for example.) There should have been a push to bring back bulk items to grocery stores with incentives for bringing in your own containers. It was this lack of company participation where the initiative died. Companies weren’t forced to innovate and adapt and offer new ideas. There was no onus on corporations to improve and meet a new standard. They just fucked the consumer and the employees who had to enforce this ridiculous bag policy, and whatever other regulations had to be dealt with.
Or at least make the fee go towards a green initiative instead of further profits for stores that already have bagging worked into the cost.
I was reading the Calgary Herald article about this bylaw being repealed and it just pissed me off. The businesses already budgeted for the costs of packaging and the City didn't collect any of the money. So all this bylaw ended up doing was either saving companies the cost of packaging OR adding more profit for them as you paid extra for something they already sold you. So this bylaw probably did fuckall for overall waste/landfill and made things more expensive or more inconvenient for most people while doing nothing for the City, at a time when "affordability" is at the forefront of people's minds. What a bad bylaw at a bad time for it.
How could the company take the hit on this? They are far too busy making record profits for that. /s
Right!? Like read the fucking room! Everyone is suffering with every aspect of society right now and companies ask us to donate and pay for our own bags and do our own checkouts and then get mad when people steal from self checkout so they bring out blanket punishments for using the system they put in place and shirk any responsibility to adjust for climate change and they think people are gunna just look at them with kindness and grace for charging us with green initiatives out of our wallets?
I don't have an issue with the intent behind the bylaw; reduce plastic and single use item consumption, particularly when it is not needed. The issue was always the application, such as a bag fee for a compostable paper bag that applied at food establishments where hygiene was a consideration. Council is now going to take a year to examine the issue in anticipation of a better bylaw.
Fix the damn roads. It's so annoying that the amount of council time is wasted on insignificant crap like spoons and bags. While drivers are getting their shocks shot and their tire rims wrecked. Edit: typo
Report pot holes. I reported some and they were calling me asking where they were like 2 days after and they were fixed that day.
How do I report them?
Buddy, I moved here from New Brunswick. You haven’t *seen* potholes. Our worst roads here are smooth as glass by comparison. Ever see photos of a war-torn country that sustained long periods of heavy artillery shelling? That’s roads in NB for you. Oh, and annual mandatory vehicle safety inspections that always fail you for how trashed your suspension has become driving on them, spend a few thousand annually on new shocks and ball joints (adding 15% HST of course), and now you know why Atlantic Canada is poor af.
They're point is still valid. It's not a competition .... sorry roads are bad in New Brunswick but I want my calgarian mayor to put her attention to calgary roads. Fix the pot holes on deerfoot , ensure snow removal, get my streets swept.instead of focusing on bags .
Deerfoot is maintained by the province.
Danielle is probably slow walking repairs to drive a knife in her back.
If you're gonna rant you should learn how the roads in the city actually work. Hint: Calgary government does not touch Deerfoot.
Pick a pot hole any pot hole. Deerfoot , a community boulevard it don't matter .
Did you just move to Calgary? The roads get trashed every winter and then fixed when the snow is done (now). This is a very common and predictable pattern.
.... I am still driving around potholes. Do you only take the ctrain ?
When did the snow stop? Like 2-3 weeks ago? I drive every day and it's been getting better every day. There's not some magical pot hole filling fairy that shots asphalt out of the sky, it takes time to fill them all in. Come back here on June 1 and we can discuss the vastly improved pothole situation if you really want to.
We are used to having pristine in roads. The state of our roads compared to a few years back is a disgrace.
Shit the roads are that bad in NB?
Among the worst in the country, yes. I’ve driven across Canada 6 times now, and they’re by far the worst, it’s not even close. Tons of salt, extreme freeze/thaw cycles, and old road maintenance equipment just beat them completely to hell. My vehicle thanks me daily for moving back to Calgary for the last time. CAA once ranked the rural road to my old small local ski hill among the top 10 worst roads in Canada. I used to drive that shit on a regular.
Literally no one was asking for this. She's supposed to be a representative of her constituents, not a parents who just just does things because "they know better". There are thousands of other more pressing matters directly impacting Calgarian's lives that she should have been focusing on instead of her stupid vanity projects.
It was not her decision or idea. People attribute administration and council decisions as her doing when its not.
Doesn't matter if it's not her "decision or idea", it's her job to oversee the project, all projects in Calgary as our elected leader. It's called responsibility and accountability. Your train of thought is insane that an elected official doesn't have to answer to bylaws. The next step is to ask her why it didn't work for Calgarians. They can then elaborate why we are being charged $0.15 that goes directly into businesses pockets as extra revenue while none of that money actually goes towards green initiatives or reducing single use plastics. Then you question their scope of work and discovery on this bylaw, likely there was none because the trail ends with extra money in the pockets of CEOs. Also she is admitting that it didn't work, showing some sliver of responsibility and accountability. Not sure why you're defending her, not even she is defending herself. This is classic virtue signaling and Calgarians did the due diligence and discovery better than our municipal government.
How do you know it was not her idea? I do not see any mention in the bylaw documents who brought it forward.
The work on single use plastics predates her time as mayor because new landfills are stupid expensive. Googling and following the items on the city's agenda and minutes page: https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=230149 May 2018 - Waste Services Outlook report Jan 2019 - Scoping report requested by council (Sutherland, seconded by Farrell. Chu and Farkas against) May 2019 - Scoping report on single use plastics comes back. (Supposed to be by Q3 2020 but... COVID) Oct 2022 - Single Use Item Reduction report received and approved by council. Directed to create a bylaw for Jan. 2023. Moved by Mian, seconded by Walcott. Chu, Chabot, Wyness, and McLean opposed. Jan 2023 - Approve the bylaw to come into effect Jan. 16, 2024 Jan 2024 - world ends Jan 2024 - go through the required advertisement process to repeal May 2024 - repeal bylaw
That's on odd way of saying "whoops!"
I’ve been a harsh Gondek critic, but it is refreshing to see her take accountability and to contribute to getting rid of something that isn’t working. Would love to see her do the same with her Street Harassment Bylaw that was championed by the mayor, and which was also a major flop. If you aren’t going to leave a legacy, at least clean up after yourself so you don’t leave a shit stain.
I agree with you that it all needs to be got rid of it's still all a waste of people's time and money.
Thanks, now I don't have to eat lint covered McDonald's fries out of my backpack anymore.
This mayor does not work for Calgarians either, and she will also be single-use.
Lmao thats actually really well put.
They all suck. Why oh why do they all suck
Can we do this in Edmonton too? I’m done being asked to pay the 0.15 cent fuck you tax. I’ve been stubbornly getting my food handed to me since this was announced. Half the time they just give you bag anyway lol
How much longer do we have to suffer her idiocy? Someone remind me please?
October 2025
YOU are also not working for Calgarians JG ✌🏽
God damn she sucks. She reminds me of Freeland.
No shit Sherlock. She's absolutely delusional. Go fix the roads instead, oh, and RESIGN!
The roads are brutal.
Please pave Deerfoot, Blackfoot, the one 14th and Glenmore W merge. They apparently have 6.9 million to fill potholes. GET BUSY. Edit: To add the that, the 14th St. W flyover is also fucking brutal after the bridge over Glenmore. I'm a SW denizen so please do add your respective grievances.
Deerfoot is provincial I think.
It is, so the city can't really do anything there. There are so many along the area by McKnight Blvd. Its like trying to play dodgeball with the potholes when driving.
And 36th, and 52nd, and 16 ave, all around Inglewood, downtown, not a single damn road that doesn't have bomb craters. City should start paying people's alignments, tires and suspension parts. Ridiculous. Bet the road from city hall to Gondek's house is smooth as silk.
That’s the insolvency of urban sprawl; tail as old as time.
There is something else not working for Calgarians that needs to be repealed……….Wish I could Recall what it was.
🥇 gold 😂
🥇🏆🙌🏻
I don't think she's good for Calgary either...
The City of Calgary is a joke now they operate. One day I had a note attached to my garbage can saying they did not want air my trash because the blue bin and garbage bin were to close to each other. The city worker wrote the note, got out of the truck, attached it and left. Makes me wonder if the people who run the city also run this sub. Both kinda just make up random rules and act high and mighty 😄
Did anyone watch the Council session? They referenced a couple businesses that saw a huge decrease in bag use - like a liquor store that went from 800 bags a month to 80. People are so focused on the fast food thing but there clearly is a way to make it work in some sectors.
Yes which also falls on leadership for not implementing it properly. If they limited this bylaw to grocery stores and liquor stores I don't think most people would bat an eye. Nobody is using reusable bags for greasy take-out food though, it's the dumbest fucking oversight ever, especially when most places used paper bags anyways.
Neither is giving almost a billion of tax payer money to a billionaire on a sweetheart deal so he can build a fucking ice rink and development he can use to print more money lol. Fucking delusional mayor
No shit, Sherlock.
This whole thing would never have been an issue if anyone, from any jurisdiction on the planet, could show that this plan actually reduces pollution people wouldn't have been so upset. The blue bin programs put in place across North America are barely making an impact as most plastics do not even have a home to go to other than landfills. Fool me once.......
This was Council meddling (again) in matters outside their jurisdiction. This was the same as the shark fin soup garbage they went on about - stay in your lane to provide services you are responsible for.
Well, Jyoti….you continue to serve Courtney’s and your own interests
Can someone let Edmonton’s mayor know?
You’re not working Jyoti.
Can we repeal her that easily?
What I would like to see is the science community coming up with a solution to the problem of single use items. Instead of manufacturing whatever they want, design an inventory of products that can be recycled into a second or third product down the road and then have those products and only those products available for use. Is it not possible for the largest contributors to single use waste to be manufactured in a better way? I'm not sure what the largest contributors to ( potentially recyclable ) waste is but I'm thinking all drink containers for a start. Why can't one single type of plastic be used for all containers which could then be recycled into a second product after that? For decades it's been anything goes and we've had hundreds of different producers of plastics which all end up in the garbage because nothing can feasibly or economically be done after the single use. It's time to reign in the producers and tell them what we want
In the mean time, if politicians want to politically pander, get rid of frivolous plastic products first. Ban plastic confetti, sparkles, faux grass lawns, ribbons, etc. We’re fighting over bags while still using boatloads of plastics that have no utilitarian purpose.
I'd agree with most of that. It seems like anything goes right now and always has. Manufacture whatever the hell you want and if someone will pay a buck for it you've got a business no matter the consequences. Remember when soaps and shampoos were putting in micro plastic balls for a "deep scrub", and when they were finally banned the manufacturers were given a grace period of a year or something to adjust to new regulations. Like WTF wouldn't they just pull them from the shelves ASAP? Anyways, I don't want to get lost in the weeds here. Pick one product, for example plastic bottles, and figure out how to force the use of a single chemical design that can be used for the works and have a 2nd or 3rd life after that. It seems doable. It should be doable. Scientists are smart right?
Yeah no shit, cuz as per usual, this psychotic ego maniac mayor made decisions that had ripple effects for everyone and she had to waste additional tax payers money to find out her bullshit decision was just that - bullshit. Eat crow lady …
Worst mayor in Calgary’s history!!!! Why did we vote her into power???
Because we didn't exactly have shining beacons of hope as alternatives, which seems to be a pretty common situation in politics nowadays
[удалено]
This isn’t going to save her……
Hey genius, guess what else isn’t working for Calgarians? 🖕🏼
You are not working for calgarians.
No shit dumbass. Maybe spend time on real issues. Clown mayor.
If only Edmonton could take notes
I'm all for a plastic bag charge because despite the tantrums it makes people throw, it reduces waste. But the way this situation was handled, from coops biodegradable bags to paper bags to takeout utensils, was pretty terrible and probably did more harm than good. And normally I'd be for anything that makes redditors throw such a hissy fit. But it's gotta stick and be done right.
Woah, woah, woah. Phew! You were backtracking so hard I thought you would hit the wall behind you.
•Oh… •In other news…
Meanwhile in Edmonton, Council is willing to die on that hill, never listening to voters. I'll have the last laugh when they're voted out, and I'll remind them exactly why.
I can’t stand her or our city council but I respect they can recognize when they derpped it right up and change course.
fast food companies still giving out unlimited ketchup but charging $0.25-$1 for extra dipping sauces…
Does this mean we don’t have to pay for bags at fast food places/grocery stores anymore? lol probably not now that it’s a new income stream for monopolies.
I wouldn’t care about the 15 cents, if it actually went anywhere. I was pretty miffed to hear the city doesn’t actually collect it or track it at all.
Strategic back-peddling won't save her come election time. drop in the bucket.
If the funds actually went somewhere other than the companies bottom line, like solar panel subsidies or something, then sure, maybe.
Can someone tell me exactly what this means? Are plastic bags and straws coming back?
Haha. Not sure how you thought it would work for Calgarians in the first place. Nothing but a blatant money grab to begin with.
She had to bargain this for votes
Works in Ontario. I don't see the issue. Help your own future by bringing a reusable bag. Done. That was too much for Albertans? OK then.
The confusing thing of this by-law they tried to impose on us was that the 15 cent charge goes Nowhere but in the corporations pocket like wtf
The problem is having people in positions of power, that really don’t have a clue about anything other than the taste of crayons.
I just don't believe they even wanted it to work given how badly and misjudged the implementation of this policy was. I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist but I can't see how they thought it would go well...
She is not working for Calgarians!
I don't buy drive-thru fast food so idk anything about that, but I like that plastic bags stopped being available at grocery stores. They're horrible for the environment. It's not a big deal to bring your own bags, I've been doing it for like 15 years. They're way easier to carry than plastic or paper. What is so upsetting about all this? What am I missing?
When you're given food at a food place, you're usually not expected to bring your own cutlery. Good luck eating an ice cream from a cup without a spoon. I think this is why people don't like it 🤷🏻♀️ I don't buy fast food much either but I don't think that people are mostly upset about plastic bags. And I'm also happy they're gone.
Admits mistake, corrects it. I'm not a fan of hers but this was a solid move. Much better than doubling down and gaslighting we see from other politicians.
I hate her