The petition, which also serves as an information tool, remains open as long as it takes to pass Bill 390. Your signature will be presented again at the National Assembly at a later date.

Since the beginning of the campaign, reusable bags have appeared all over the province and are here to stay! Many Quebecers are now using them.

About 115 000 signatures have already been presented by EcoContribution to the government of Québec. To see the chronology of this campaign from June 2005 to May 2007, click here.

Chronology since May 2007

• Since the month of May 2007, Jacques Lalonde, founder of EcoContribution, has met three times with a political attaché of Mrs Line Beauchamp to present viable and efficient solutions aiming to reduce the number of plastic bags in Quebec.
• On August 10, 2007, La Presse published a front-page article announcing that Mrs Beauchamp was studying the possibility of a tax on plastic shopping bags. The province of Quebec reacted strongly to this announcement and by the end of the day, Mrs Beauchamp promise to act on the question before the end of the Fall session (Le Devoir, Cyberpresse).

Myth and reality concerning the recyclability of plastic bags

• Myth - The opponents to the reduction, the banishment or the taxation of plastic bags purport that plastic bags represent few problems because plastic bags are supposedly "100% recyclable". Opponents include; the associations of plastic producers, merchants' associations and some major chain food stores.
• Reality - Although they are recyclable in theory, very few bags are recyclable in reality. Often used as kitchen garbage bin liners, the bags are soiled and no longer recyclable. Furthermore, 150,000 'clean' bags are needed to make a ton, which is very difficult to sell because of the poor quality of the material. EcoContribution has learned in November 2007 from a representative of Cascades Industries that it cost $85 to prepare a ton of plastic bags, which then sells for $10. Same problem at the City of Sherbrooke; "Plastic a bags are a nuisance for the recycling facilities". For the City of Laval, the recycling of plastic bags is simply not done, because it is too problematic and costly. For EcoContribution, the notion de recyclability is an illusion, misleading, because it leads people to believe that putting all plastic bags (and other refuse) out for garbage collection solves all environmental problems. In fact, this only increases consumption of plastic bags (and other goods). We must reduce at source. Many people do this voluntarily (between 10 and 20% of the population) by adopting reusable bags (Thank you!) but to attain truly meaningful results, we need to legislate and either ban or tax plastic bags.

In Québec and in Canada

• March 22, 2007- Leaf rapids (Manitoba) was the first Canadian municipality to ban plastic bags on its territory (CBC).
• January 1, 2008- The municipality of Huntingdon (Québec) bans plastic bags (The Gazette).
• February 5, 2008 - The SAQ (Quebec Liquor Board) announces that it will stop offering plastic bags after december 31, 2008. The SAQ estimates that since June 2005 (the same date EcoContribution's petition went on line) the distribution of plastic bags in its stores has gone down 15% (press release in French).
• February 11, 2008 - The Maxi & Cie food store of the City of Sherbrooke (Quebec) stopped giving out plastic bags to its customers (Cyberpresse).
• Other Quebec municipalities which are thinking of passing legislation on plastic bags; Magdalen Islands, Amqui, Sept-Îles.

Elsewhere in the world

• The quantity of plastics bags used in Ireland has been reduced by 90% after a "plastax" was passed in 2002. One year after the tax was impose, a survey revealed that 91% of respondents were satisfied with the tax (Department of the Environment, Ireland).
• On October 11, 2005, France voted to ban non biodegradable plastic bags by 2010.
• On January 8, 2008, China announced that free plastic bags will be banished as of June 1, 2008 (WikiNews).

Another tax?

• One of the solutions proposed is a 20-cent tax per bag. If we can expect the same results as in Ireland, that would mean that the average consumption per inhabitant would go from 500 bags per year to 50 (a 90% reduction). Therefore, the average Quebecer would be paying $10 per year, while those people who did use reusable bags paying much less than $10.
• In fact this would be an optional tax; the tax would not apply to those who choose to help the environment by using reusable bags. And that would be the purpose of the tax; to incite the population to adopt reusable bags. And, like in Ireland, it would work!

The environmental and financial cost

• In Quebec, close to 2 billion of these bags are handed out to consumers each year. In Australia, it is close to 6 billion, and in the United-States, 380 billion. Globally, the number is almost 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000).
• These plastic bags can take up to 400 years before biodegrading and represent up to 2% of the volume of garbage in our landfills.
• Those which do not go to landfill are a source of visual pollution, are carried off by the wind and end up floating in the ocean for years. Hundreds of thousands of fish, turtles, birds and sea mammals ingest them and die unnecessarily each year.