Canada single-use plastics ban vs B.C. regulation: 10 formats overlap, and B.C. alone reaches 13 more

What the Canada single-use plastics ban covers

The federal rule is short and precise. SOR/2022-138 was registered on 20 June 2022 under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA), and it defines six item types, each by shape and by a technical test (Justice Laws, current to 30 September 2026). It does not define “single-use plastic” on its own; the phrase appears only as a prefix to each item.

Cutlery and straws are caught if they contain polystyrene or polyethylene, or if they change their physical properties after 100 runs through a household dishwasher. A checkout bag is any plastic bag designed to carry goods bought from a business; a fabric bag is caught only if it breaks or tears when used to carry 10 kg over 53 m 100 times, or when washed by the single domestic wash procedure in ISO 6330. Foodservice ware is limited to clamshells, lidded containers, boxes, cups, plates and bowls designed for food or drink that is ready to eat, and only where they contain expanded or extruded polystyrene foam, PVC, a black pigment made by incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons, or oxo-degradable plastic (section 1).

Section 7 requires any test of physical characteristics to be done by a laboratory accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 by a body that signs the ILAC arrangement, or under Québec’s Environment Quality Act. Sections 8 and 9 require five years of records for items made or imported for export, kept at the principal place of business in Canada or another Canadian address given to the Minister.

The 2022 impact statement estimated 29,654 million units and 149,300 tonnes of these items sold in Canada in 2019, and a net cut of about 1.3 million tonnes of plastic waste over 2023 to 2032, at a present value cost of about CAD 2 billion (Canada Gazette Part II, 22 June 2022). Checkout bags dominate the tonnage; cutlery and straws dominate the item count after bags.

Exports are the one moving part. The section 10 amendment that barred manufacture, import and sale for export took effect on 20 December 2025, 42 months after registration. On the same day, the Canada Gazette Part I published a proposal to add a new subsection 2(2) exempting all six item types when made, imported or sold for export, while keeping the domestic bans and the five-year record duty (Canada Gazette Part I, 20 December 2025). Its consultation ran from 20 December 2025 to 28 February 2026, and ECCC’s registry still lists it as proposed. The Justice Laws consolidation, current to 30 September 2026, shows the last amendment as 20 December 2025, so SPI has not yet confirmed a final repeal.

BC single-use plastic regulation: what the province adds

B.C. Reg. 254/2023 was deposited on 1 December 2023 under the Environmental Management Act. It has three working parts, and each is built differently from the federal rule (King’s Printer, current to 27 October 2026).

Part 2 bans the sale or distribution of any packaging or single-use product made wholly or partly of oxo-degradable plastic, defined as plastic with an additive that breaks it into microfragments through oxidation. That is wider than the federal rule, which reaches oxo-degradable plastic only inside its foodservice ware definition. Medical devices under the Pharmaceutical Services Act and items for sale outside B.C. are exempt.

Part 3 rebuilds the shopping bag. A business may not hand out a bag to carry goods away unless the regulation allows it, and the only bags it may sell are recycled paper bags with at least 40% recycled content, marked with the percentage and the word “recyclable”, at no less than CAD 0.25, and reusable bags made to be machine-washed at least 100 times, at no less than CAD 2.00. The customer must first be offered the chance to use their own bag, the price must be disclosed and the charge must sit on its own receipt line (sections 4 to 6).

Part 4 deals with food service ware and accessories. It sets two lists of prohibited materials, class A and class B, and ties each to a type of business (section 9). It limits accessories such as straws, napkins and lids to customers who ask for them, bans single-use plastic utensils from food service providers, and bans bundled accessory packs (sections 12 to 14).

The material lists apply to a wider set of shapes than the federal one. B.C.’s definition of food service ware covers bowls, cartons, cups, lidded containers, plates, platters, trays and film wrap, and the province’s factsheet adds take-out containers, hinged containers and egg cartons as examples. The federal definition stops at six shapes and only for food that is ready to eat. That gap is why foam egg cartons and foam trays sit inside the B.C. rule and outside the federal one, in SPI’s reading of both texts.

Who acts also differs. The federal duties fall on any person who manufactures, imports or sells. B.C.’s class B ban falls on every business operator that sells or distributes the ware or food packaged in it, and its class A ban, the stricter one, on food service providers only. A grocer selling compostable plastic plates is lawful in B.C.; a café serving a salad in the same plate for takeout is not.

Twenty-seven formats, side by side

Exhibit 4 is the core of this piece. SPI chose 27 formats that appear in restaurant, grocery and converter catalogues and read each against both texts. A format counts as caught where a rule bans it or limits how it may be supplied, such as on request only or only at a minimum price.

The two cells marked “neither” deserve a note. Clear PET containers are outside both texts, and B.C.’s section 11(2) expressly exempts paper and plant-fibre ware lined with compostable or other allowable plastic. Those two formats are where much of the market has gone, which is consistent with the federal impact statement’s view that most of the ban’s cost is substitution.

A third layer sits under both. B.C. says municipalities can set their own single-use bylaws, which may be stricter than the provincial rule (B.C. Government, updated 19 September 2024). SPI has not yet confirmed the current bylaw lists of individual B.C. municipalities, so a format marked “allowed” in Exhibit 4 may still be restricted locally.

Dates: from 2022 to 2030

The two rules were built on overlapping clocks. The federal one runs from registration in June 2022 to the export ban in December 2025; the provincial one from deposit in December 2023 to the last exemption in July 2030. The court case adds a third clock.

One date lines up exactly. B.C.’s accessory limits took effect on 20 December 2023, the same day as the federal sale ban on cutlery, straws and stir sticks, so restaurants met both changes at once. The provincial bag and ware rules came 208 days later, on 15 July 2024, by SPI’s calculation.

The remaining B.C. deadlines are 608 days away for PVC film wrap and 1,338 days away for foam raw-protein trays, counted from 1 November 2026 by SPI’s calculation. Both exemptions are written into section 11 with their repeal dates, so no further regulation is needed for them to end.

Bags: one bans a material, the other sets a price

Bags are where the two rules look most alike and work most differently. The federal rule bans plastic checkout bags of any thickness, and tests fabric bags so that a heavy woven polypropylene bag passes only if it survives 100 uses carrying 10 kg over 53 m and an ISO 6330 wash. It sets no rule for paper and no charge for anything.

B.C. starts from the opposite end: no bag at all may be handed out to carry goods away, unless the regulation allows it. The allowed bags are priced. Paper must be at least 40% recycled and sold for CAD 0.25 or more; a reusable bag must be made for at least 100 machine washes and sold for CAD 2.00 or more. Retailers with 500 or more employees in B.C., counting franchise arrangements together, must keep the average number of paper and reusable bags sold per transaction for each of the previous two years (section 8).

Utensils, straws and accessories: a ban and a request rule

The federal rule bans plastic cutlery, stir sticks and most plastic straws outright, with a narrow path for flexible straws. Under section 5, flexible straws may be sold in non-commercial, non-industrial and non-institutional settings, in packages of 20 or more from one business to another, and in retail stores only when the customer asks and the package is kept out of view without a store employee’s help. Hospitals, medical facilities, long-term care homes and other care institutions may supply them to patients or residents.

B.C. adds a behavioural rule on top. A food service provider may give out a single-use accessory, which the regulation defines to include cup lids and sleeves, condiments, straws, garnishes, napkins, utensils and wet wipes, only when the customer asks for it or accepts it, including electronically, or from a self-serve station (section 12). Cup lids may go out with delivery and drive-through orders, and care facilities and correctional settings have their own exceptions. Section 13 bans any single-use utensil wholly or partly made of plastic, and B.C. counts stir sticks and splash plugs as utensils. Section 14 bans bundled accessory packs, except in care facilities. Sections 12 to 14 do not apply to accessories sold in quantities of 20 or more (section 10).

Compostable plastic: allowed on the shelf, barred at the counter

The sharpest split between the two lists is compostable plastic. Federal law does not name it: a compostable plastic container is outside SOR/2022-138 unless it also contains foam polystyrene, PVC, the listed black pigment or oxo-degradable plastic. Compostable plastic cutlery and straws are a different case, because the federal test catches cutlery and straws that change after 100 dishwasher cycles, whatever the resin.

B.C. puts compostable plastic in class A. Since 15 July 2024 a food service provider may not serve takeout, delivery or ready-to-eat food or drink in ware made wholly or partly of it (section 11(1)). The same material is not in class B, so a grocer or other retailer may still sell compostable plastic plates, cups and containers. The province’s factsheet says so in one line, quoted below.

The exemption that keeps much of the takeout market working is section 11(2): paper or plant-fibre ware lined with compostable plastic, or another allowable plastic, may still be used by food service providers. The test is therefore not “is there any plastic”, but “is the container made of a prohibited material, or is it fibre with a permitted lining”.

Exemptions, side by side

Each rule carries exemptions that the other does not. Most federal exemptions concern the supply chain: transit and waste. Most B.C. exemptions concern destination, material lining and two time-limited formats.

A framework: four quadrants for a B.C. product list

The 27 formats fall into four groups, and each group calls for a different action. SPI uses the two lists as the axes of a simple 2×2: is the format caught federally, and is it caught in B.C.?

The quadrant that carries the most work is “B.C. only”, because it depends on facts a national product file often lacks: whether the buyer is a food service provider, whether a fibre container’s lining is a permitted plastic, and whether the food in a foam tray is raw protein. The “federal only” quadrant is small but exposed to the court case.

If the federal listing fell: what B.C. would still reach

The federal regulations rest on the 2021 order adding “plastic manufactured items” to Schedule 1 of CEPA. The Federal Court quashed that order on 16 November 2023, the decision was stayed pending appeal, and the Federal Court of Appeal allowed the government’s appeal on 30 January 2026 (2026 FCA 17). The Supreme Court of Canada granted leave on 15 October 2026, with costs in the cause, and the Registrar has set the notice of appeal for 16 November 2026 and the appellants’ factum for 18 January 2027; the hearing date is to be confirmed (Supreme Court docket 42277, modified 16 October 2026). The procedure is covered in SPI News on the Supreme Court appeal.

B.C.’s regulation rests on the Environmental Management Act, not on CEPA. So SPI mapped how far B.C. law alone reaches each federal item type. This is a reading of today’s texts, not a forecast of the outcome; SPI does not rank the outcomes, and any remedy would be set by the Court. The Federal Plastics Registry, a reporting duty under the same federal statute, is covered separately in SPI’s piece on the Federal Plastics Registry.

SPI calculation: the item B.C. would fully cover is 124,746 of 149,300 tonnes, or 83.6% of the 2019 federal tonnage. Partial cover adds 23,906 tonnes across cutlery, foodservice ware, straws and stir sticks, or 16.0%, and ring carriers, with no B.C. cover, are 648 tonnes, or 0.4%. Those are national figures used to weigh the item types; SPI has not yet confirmed a B.C.-only split.

Enforcement and penalties, in Canadian dollars

Both rules are enforced through their parent statutes. The federal prohibitions are designated provisions under CEPA, so breaches fall under section 272, which sets minimum as well as maximum fines (Justice Laws, current to 30 September 2026). B.C.’s regulation sets no fines itself; selling or distributing contrary to it breaches section 11 of the Environmental Management Act, an offence under section 120(2)(c), and section 122(1) lets a court impose a separate fine for each day an offence continues (King’s Printer, current to 27 October 2026).

The enforcement record is thin. ECCC’s pages, as recorded in SPI’s tracker on 14 October 2026, list no conviction under the federal regulations, and SPI has not identified a published enforcement action under B.C. Reg. 254/2023. B.C. says its focus is ongoing education, outreach and awareness, under its risk-based compliance model, and it takes public reports of suspected breaches through an online form (B.C. Government regulation page).

Scenarios: what a continuing B.C. breach could cost

B.C.’s fine is lower per offence, but section 122(1) allows a separate fine for each day. SPI ran a simple sensitivity on one B.C.-only format, for example a café still serving compostable plastic takeout containers, which the federal rule does not catch.

SPI calculation: CAD 200,000 x 7 = CAD 1,400,000, and CAD 200,000 x 30 = CAD 6,000,000. The point is not the size of a likely fine, which no published B.C. case yet indicates, but that a B.C.-only item is not a low-stakes item. The federal minimum on indictment, CAD 500,000, is 2.5 times the B.C. maximum for one day.

Who must act, role by role

The two rules land on different parts of the chain. Federal duties start at the factory and the border; B.C. duties start at the counter.