If you've received a City of Vancouver parking ticket in the last couple of decades you may have noticed that they're much more difficult to rip in half and/or crumple up than they were in the olden days, back when paper was king.
That's because, as City staff tell V.I.A., they've been made out of plastic "since the early-2000s."
This means that the City is responsible for placing 375,000 pieces of plastic onto the windshields of cars here every single year. More than five million since they were first introduced. Thousands of pounds of the stuff.
The reason they chose the non-biodegradable material is seemingly because it's "water resistant," and withstands the torrents of rain that Vancouver, its citizens, and their windshields deal with.
The tickets are technically recyclable, and the City tells us that they "are made mostly of recycled materials."
However, "mostly" is actually 30 per cent according to the City's supplier of these tickets.
And while the tickets might be recyclable, residents aren't permitted to put them in their recycling bins. Should you choose to recycle your parking ticket you'll have to bring it to a recycling depot.
All of this is to say that roughly 374,999 plastic parking tickets make their way to the landfill in Vancouver every year; I imagine there's at least one person who's dedicated enough to take time out of their day to hand-deliver theirs all the way to the repository.
Knowing this, it's hard to dispute that the City has a double standard in place for themselves and its citizens, forcing us to abide by ever-increasing single-use item by-laws while they shovel plastic onto us.
I sit here reflecting on this as I sip a smoothie out of a wilting paper straw, my pockets filled with reusable bags that I dutifully brought to work because I'm going grocery shopping later.
I'm left feeling a little less confident in my city's commitment to saving the turtles and helping in the effort to keep my home above sea level in the years and decades ahead.
Why should I even bother trying to do my part when Vancouver wags its finger at me, all the while offsetting my individual effort with heaps of plastic waste?
