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A second example I wanted to show is fertiliser.
And one of the key pieces here is for the most part
homeowners will use fertiliser but one of the
oversights that they had was--you didn't take
into account that farmers used bagged fertiliser and
in the Canadian marketplace the vast
majority of fertiliser used by growers would be
in the bulk form but there are still a significant
amount of product use in 25 kig bags.
And in this case they came under the stewardship
activity and what we're seeing here is we have
costs of in the area of 41ยข per kilo so if you
multiply that by 25 you're having some very
significant stewardship fees on a bag of fertiliser.
And the key piece with that is, you know, you're
recycling a small plastic bag of fertiliser.
That's a lot of money to manage a plastic bag.
So one of the key pieces here is so that after
industry goes and it goes through the discussions we
can reduce the rates but that was a lot of
indigestion for the industry to deal with very briefly.
Again, you know those individuals that are
selling the product have to pay for this.
So the key piece here is packaging in Canada,
one of the challenges we have is having government
understand the agricultural realm.
Basically 50% of all packaging in the Canadian
marketplace is household; the rest is business to business.
Agriculture is a very, very small portion of that
and within that a good portion of that is
household that they deem agriculture but in true
sense it's more the homeowner type product.
So with that what we're seeing from a stewardship
standpoint is increasing wants and needs from a
government standpoint to get into other
agricultural waste and we see this as a great
opportunity for CleanFARMS.
Disinfectant containers, Ag films,
net twine, et cetera, et cetera. Bagged products such as
fertiliser containers, animal health as well as
some other non-organic waste that is
predominantly at the farm level.
And so what we're doing right now and I won't
spend a lot of time on this but the key message
here is we do a lot of waste characterisation
studies in the Canadian marketplace and what we're
seeing is huge, huge tonnages that are out
there that currently aren't being managed.
And I'm not going to go through all this but we're
seeing from a pesticide standpoint when we're
managing three and four million containers that
dwarfs what we're seeing in other Ag film.
Absolutely dwarfs it.
We're seeing grain bags, silage film in the 200 to 400 tonnes
range in Saskatchewan which is the largest
agricultural province in the country.
You know we're into huge, huge tonnage of product.
Basically what we're doing right now is we're doing
characterisation studies of all Ag waste across the
country and the key piece of why we're doing this is
then we can have educated discussions with the
regulators in terms of how they mandate the
stewardship of these activities and if you
better know the marketplace you have
successful programs.
So what we're doing to date is we run a lot of
pilots across the country.
I won't go into all these but the key piece here is
we ask for backstop regulation and I think
that's really key in terms of the Canadian
marketplace and the sense of if you don't have
backstop regulation, it becomes a free-for-all
throughout the marketplace and if it's mandated by
all the manufacturers they all have to play the game
whereas now you have a few enlightened manufacturers
that see stewardship as a strategic advantage.
What we see is bringing everybody into the same
tent, the same way that we do in the pesticide realm
where we have over 90% of the marketplace at the table.
Very last couple of slides here is we also need to
find end-use markets for these type of products.
This is a typical example of a type of program that
they communicate to farmers.
Grain bags that we would see in predominantly in
Western Canada.
One of the key challenges we have is this is dirty
messy stuff.
And our other key competition is burning of product.
It's easy to get rid of it and right now there are in
some provinces burn regulations but not in
every province and it's not enforced very rigidly.
So with that just a couple of key pieces here.
This is a bunch of market research that we did when
we asked farmers: Would you support stewardship
programs?, the vast majority of them said yes.
When we look at the type of wastes that we're
starting to find: How would you like to pay for it?
Some asked for visual fees,
others just want it buried in the cost.
It's really all over the board.
When we ask: How is your twine disposed of?,
the vast majority burn it.
How's your silage wrap disposed of?,
the vast majority burn it.
When we asked them what would you do with your
empty pesticide containers?
You recycle them because there's an existing
program out there and it meets their needs and I
think that's the key piece.
If you have a program that meets their needs,
their willingness to participate is
dramatically higher.
Just my last slide here and then a couple of key
messages I want to impart on everybody here.
There's no consistent program across the country.
I would love if there is one but there probably
won't be 'cause it's all dictated at the provincial level.
If you have a good stewardship program
farmers are willing to participate.
And I wouldn't underestimate that.
If you have a program that meets their needs,
they will participate.
We found that in the various programs that
we've run.
Ag packaging, it's in Canada,
it's just starting down that path of asking for
stewardship programs but that's really where we see
the growth market.
In terms of Ag container plastic,
that's a very, very small portion of the bigger Ag
plastic picture.
But one thing we do have is we have an opportunity
to build on what we already do right now and
benefit the overall industry.
And lastly, you know this is what we see the future
of CleanFARMS.
So with that, thank you very much.
If anybody has questions or you would like more
information on this there's certainly my
e-mail and I think we'll be taking questions after.
So thank you.