Kingston, Ont. one of Canada’s top cities for reusable water bottles

Residents in Kingston, Ont. are enjoying reusable water bottles more than almost any other city in Canada, new numbers show.

The Statistics Canada Households and the Environment Survey released on Monday finds 95 per cent of households in Kingston use reusable water bottles, the second highest in the country.

Lethbridge, Alta. leads the way in using reusable water bottles in Canada, with 97 per cant of households having at least one person using their own water bottle. St. Catharines-Niagara and Peterborough had the lowest use of reusable water bottle usage, at 85 and 84 per cent respectively.

The survey finds nine in 10 Canadian households had at least one person who used their own water bottle, while 85 per cent of those households use reusable water bottles "always or often."

StatsCan notes reusable water bottles offer an alternative solution to purchasing single-use water bottles.

"Single-use plastics, such as plastic bags, plastic bottles and plastic drinking straws, are major components of pollution," StatsCan said Monday.

The federal government has implemented a plastics reduction strategy that aims to transition from single-use plastics to paper or biocompostable plastics.

The survey finds 97 per cent of Canadian households reported using their own bags or containers when grocery shopping. StatsCan says 51 per cent of households said they always use their own shopping bags, up from 43 per cent in 2019.