Feds to invest $3.3M in 21 businesses for plastic pollution innovation: Guilbeault

Today I’m announcing the Government of Canada is providing an additional investment of more than $3.3 million to support 21 Canadian businesses and organizations to develop innovative solutions that address plastic pollution. For those of you were here earlier, we had a panel and we had a business owner. Valerie Valerie who does has a zero plastic, a couple of 0 plastic shop and she said it would be good if the Federal Government could invest more in SMEs. Here we are a few hours later. How fast is that? She asked for it this morning. Here. Here I am. We hadn’t planned that at all. The funding is being provided to recipient as part of Canada’s Zero Plastic Waste agenda. Specifically, nine small and medium sized Canadian companies will receive up to $150,000 each to support development of technologies to address plastic waste and pollution. Right now, too many plastics cannot easily be recycled. Today’s investment will help these companies develop environmentally acceptable and cost effective solutions to improve our ability to reuse plastics or improve the end of life management. Of hard to recycle plastic film that is commonly used to wrap consumer products. The rest of the funding over $2,000,000, will be distributed among 12 recipients to support the development of circular solutions including reuse, textile, industrial, commercial and institutional plastic beverage containers and restaurants. These projects will have positive impacts on the environment, help de risk investment, encourage the adoption and scale up of circular solutions. So that moving forward, we will live with plastic in a way that is sustainable for generations to come. I extend my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to all 21 recipients for the pursuit of a cleaner, less wasteful way of doing business.