Canadian companies can no longer manufacture or buy plastic bags, cutlery, stir sticks, straws or take-out containers abroad and, in a year, it will also be illegal to sell them.

The federal government estimated that getting rid of single-use plastics will eliminate as many as 1.3 million tons of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and pollution equivalent to one million garbage bags, according to NBC News.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed in 2019 that this ban would take effect in 2021, but it took the government another year to find out a regulatory framework to make it happen.

According to statistics released last month, Canadians were already reducing their use of straws and plastic bags before the national ban was issued.

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