Businessman dreams of plastic-free future

Kuujjuaq resident Bruce Turner has a dream – that all businesses, government offices and municipalities in the North will one day use biodegradable products instead of plastic.

Turner wants to see mining camps, restaurants, airlines and the Cruise North travel firm use totally reuseable and recyclable products instead of one-use, throw-away cups, dishes and cutlery made of plastic or styrofoam.

To replace all the plastic that's now in everyday use, Turner is promoting a line of utensils and food containers made by a southern Quebec company called Nova Envirocom.

Their products look like plastic and can be used like plastic. But unlike plastic, they degrade in the environment.

The company's utensils are made out of a material called Mater-Bi, a corn-based product. Other plastic-looking containers and cups are made of potatoes – they're called "Spudware" – or sugar.

The mock plastic dinnerware is about 20 per cent more expensive than plastic, but you can reuse the items or toss these away after use and in six to eight months they will eventually break down in a landfill site.

Put them in a compost heap where decomposing organic matter creates heat and they'll dissolve in a few weeks, unlike plastic, which can take hundreds of years to break down.

Cutting down on the amount of plastic trash that ends up in landfills could be turn out to be healthy move, too.

Two weeks ago, Canada banned commonly-used plastic polycarbonate infant bottles, saying one of their chemical ingredients is toxic and could cause long-term harmful effects in children.

Polycarbonate looks like glass, but it's lighter and doesn't easily break. The problem is that it contains a chemical that mimics estrogen, a human hormone, and has caused long-term changes in animal testing trials.

This year, Cruise North, the Makivik-owned cruise company, plans to switch to the biodegradable ware.

When Turner, who works for Cruise North during the summer, organizes an on-shore tour, he always tells passengers not to leave anything behind.

"We even discourage leaving cigarette butts," he said. "But if they drop these new forms or knives behind, it won't pollute."

But composting should go hand-in-hand with promoting biodegradable products, Turner said.

That's why he wants Kuujjuaq to become the first community in Quebec to get rid of plastic and embrace large-scale composting.

Recently, Turner brought Nova Envirocom's president, Pierre Morency, to Kuujjuaq.

Turner also plans to plug the products at next week's Nunavut Trade Show in Iqaluit, where the food services will use Nova Envirocom products.

Nova Envirocom already supplies biodegradable food containers, bags, composters and waste collection bins to more than 1,000 municipalities, businesses and public groups in Quebec.

Turner said the market in the North may be very small, but people should put limits on the kinds of products that end up in the North or the region risks becoming a giant trash can for southern-produced goods.

Quebec, unlike Nunavut, encourages the switch to biodegradable products.

Quebec funds a body called Recyc-Québec to assist better waste management, and there's a province-wide action plan to back up its efforts. The main goal of this policy is to recover and reuse waste by 65 per cent by the end of 2008.