Sustainability

From the beginning, convenience stores were ready-made to serve the youth market – with a large range of products and services specifically aimed at teens and young adults with spare change burning a hole in their pockets.

Suncor Energy Inc.'s on-again, off-again plan to add a coker unit to its Montreal refinery to allow it to process heavier barrels of oil, including oilsands bitumen, is off the table as it shuffles its spending priorities.

Delays and design changes have driven the cost to build the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion up by about 70% to $12.6 billion from the $7.4 billion estimate made three years ago, the company says.The project has cost about $2.5 billion to date, including the impact of delays and additional regulatory processes, leaving an additional $8.4 billion needed to complete construction, plus $1.7 billion of financial carrying costs, said president and CEO Ian Anderson on a conference call Feb.

Given the urgent need to reduce the city's environmental footprint, Montreal will move to fully ban the distribution of plastic bags by the end of 2020, Mayor Valerie Plante said Feb 5.

On the corner of Montreal's historic St-Laurent Blvd.

Canada's restaurant owners are eager to do their part to curb this country's addiction to plastics, their association says, but they want the government to leave time for them to adapt to a ban on plastic take-out containers.Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Thursday Ottawa's promised ban on many single-use plastics is coming in 2021 after a scientific assessment of plastic pollution released Thursday found that the waste is harmful to the environment.The list of what will be banned is still in development.Carol Patterson, national vice-president at Restaurants Canada, said the industry needs a reasonable time to find and procure alternatives that are both affordable and better for the environment.“We are really calling on the government to have an approach that takes into account the full life cycle of products but also providing those reasonable timelines for safe and functional alternatives to enter the market,'' Patterson said.At the same time as restaurants are grappling with finding non-plastic options, they are seeing a surge in demand for take-out containers from the explosion of online food-delivery services.

Quebec will expand its deposit system to include different kinds of alcohol and beverage containers in an effort to recycle more products and reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.

A national ban on many single-use plastics is on track for next year after a government report concluded Thursday that there is more than enough evidence proving plastic pollution is harmful.