3.+Statistics+and+Examples



Despite the little effort of introducing waste reducing taxes by the government, people are still throwing away excessive amount of waste that could be avoided. According to Statistics Canada, each year Canadians create more than 31 million loads of garbage (Canada). For instance, in the case of plastic bags, Canadians would obtain 55 million of them per week with little likelihood of reusing them. The public is not aware of the consequences of poor waste management.

A straightforward example that could be observed on how much waste people are producing daily is a regular sandwich meal in the well-known fast food restaurant chain, McDonald’s. A sandwich meal consists of at least five different kinds of garbage: the oily paper wrapper of the burger, the paper cup, plastic lid and the plastic straw of the drink, the paper container of the fries, the plastic ketchup package and the paper advertisement sheet that comes with the tray if one is to have the meal in the restaurant. All the different garbage will end up to a landfill as they are not recyclable.

As for individual household, many families do not have the practice of recycling; in a survey done in 2000, Toronto, households were reported only recycled 24% of the materials and 76% were treated as pure waste to the landfill (Canada). Individuals are responsible for these wastes but the ultimate stakeholders are the corporations who designed such products. Companies create products for the sake of revenue; currently, they are designing items knowing the fact that these objects will eventually be part of a landfill. At present, there are 10,000 landfill locations in Canada (Canada). If actions are not to be carried out immediately, there will soon be alarming environmental issues occurring. For that reason, the change should start which such companies who designed the waste by regulating the rules which will be further discussed in the Communication Strategy modal.