Canada Launches Consultation On Federal Plastics Registry

On December 30, 2023, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, published a Notice of Intent to issue a Section 46 Notice for the Federal Plastics Registry and is seeking feedback from partners and interested stakeholders. The Section 46 Notice will require producers of products to report annually on the quantity and types of plastic they place on the Canadian market, how it moves through the economy, and how it is managed at end-of-life.

A Section 46 information gathering notice issued under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) provides the Minister with the authority to issue notices for conducting research, creating an inventory of data, formulating objectives, issuing guidelines, and assessing or reporting on the state of the environment. The inventory of data captured through the Section 46 Notice will be used to create the Federal Plastics Registry.

The Federal Plastics Registry will monitor plastics in the economy over time and the collected information will be used by the government to measure progress towards zero plastic waste and inform future actions to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

If you are a producer of a plastic product, a producer responsibility organization(PRO), or a service provider that manages plastic products at end-of-life, you may be impacted by the Section 46 Notice data gathering initiative and the future Federal Plastics Registry.

The following categories of plastic products are captured under the proposed Section 46 Notice:

• Packaging, including primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging
• Single-use or disposable plastic products
• Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE)
• Tires
• Transportation
• Construction
• White goods
• Agriculture and horticulture
• Fishing and aquaculture
• Textiles and apparel

Details regarding the subcategories of each category can be found in the Notice of Intent. In addition to the categories of products that must be reported on, the Notice of Intent outlines who it applies to and the information that is required.

The Section 46 Notice would apply to the calendar years 2024, 2025, and 2026. It is proposed that producers of packaging, single-use or disposable products, and EEE would start providing data for the 2024 calendar year, with remaining product categories to start providing data for the 2025 calendar year.

The government is engaging with provinces and territories, local governments, plastics manufacturers, producers (brand owners, importers, distributors, and retailers), waste management companies, PROs, non-governmental organizations, and members of the public. They are seeking feedback on the registry objectives, the product categories, the stakeholders required to report and the reporting requirements, transparency, privacy, and approaches to implementation including timelines.

Publication of the Notice of Intent follows the publication of a Consultation Paper (July 2022) and a Technical Paper (April 2023) on the Federal Plastics Registry.

More detail about the consultation can be found here. Interested stakeholders are invited to provide comments on the Notice of Intent by February 13, 2024. Comments received will inform the final Section 46 Notice to be issued at a later date.