You’ll soon be hard-pressed to find plastic checkout bags and plastic forks in Canada.

The federal government announced earlier this year that it would ban the manufacture and import of single-use plastics by December.

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Now, as December 20 approaches, consumers in Canada can expect to find more sustainable solutions available soon.

The ban includes:

•checkout bags

•cutlery

•food service ware made from or containing problematic plastics that are hard to recycle

•stir sticks

•straws (with some medical and accessibility exceptions)

•ring carriers (to be enacted June 2023)

These categories of single-use plastic items were identified for elimination because they are “commonly found in the environment, are harmful to wildlife and their habitat, are difficult to recycle, and have readily available alternatives,” Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) said in a release issued Saturday.

According to ECCC, this “world-leading ban on harmful single-use plastics will result in the estimated elimination of over 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution, which is equivalent to over one million full garbage bags.”

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