Surfrider Foundation Canada, one of Canada’s leading grassroots organizations focused on coastal and ocean conservation, is pleased to announce the appointment of Lucas Harris as the organization’s first Executive Director.

While today’s decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal is disappointing, it presents a call for provincial and federal action on plastic waste and plastic pollution. To date, seven municipalities in B.C. have written and implemented their own laws on plastic check-out bags. This growing patchwork of municipal laws across the province will only cause confusion.

Twelve leading ocean conservancy and environmental groups have requested that Canada’s environment and health ministers take immediate regulatory action on plastic wastes and pollution, under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1999, and call on the Government of Canada to add any plastic generated as a waste, or discharged from the use or disposal of products or packaging, to the Schedule 1 List of Toxic Substances under CEPA.