Light House has released a study that sets out recommendations for managing and tracking construction plastic waste.
The Construction Plastics Initiative (CPI) Benchmarking Study is the first national effort to evaluate plastics in Canadian construction projects at scale.
By analyzing diversion data from 253 LEED-certified projects across seven provinces, it reveals how construction plastics remain under-tracked and under-managed and how to close these gaps through stronger reporting, supplier engagement, and on-site practices.
While single-use plastics have long been in the spotlight by industry and policymakers, construction plastics — a far more significant source of plastic waste — have remained largely ignored. With global negotiations for a plastics treaty recently stalled, national and industry-level action has never been more urgent. Canada’s Federal Plastics Registry will expand in 2026 to include construction plastics, requiring companies that supply or use building materials to report how much plastic they produce, recycle, and dispose of.
To prepare the sector, Light House launched the Construction Plastics Initiative (CPI) in 2024: a first-of-its-kind pilot program working with 10 construction projects in the Lower Mainland to capture, divert, and repurpose plastic waste and manufacture them into new building materials. Supported by the CleanBC Plastics Action Fund and Environment and Climate Change Canada, CPI is piloting solutions such as on-site collection, supplier engagement, and recycling plastics into new building products — while building the evidence base for national change.
The Benchmarking Study provides the foundation of real data to illustrate the plastics problem and sets the stage for findings from the CPI project to be released in spring 2026 that will demonstrate how industry can move from problem to solution — strengthening ESG performance, meeting investor and regulatory expectations, and advancing a circular economy for construction plastics.
“Construction plastics are one of Canada’s most overlooked waste streams,” said Gil Yaron, managing director, Circular Innovation, Light House and co-author of the study. “This study gives us the evidence we need to understand the challenge, and CPI offers the pathway to progress, showing that with the right systems and partnerships in place, Canada’s construction industry can dramatically cut its plastic footprint and lead the shift to a circular economy.”
