George S. May Business Blog

Paper or Plastic the Future of Canadian Currency

For years the question of paper or plastic has been asked to Canadians every time they leave a grocery store. Now at long last the tables have turned, and Canadians can finally ask the cashier which they’d prefer.

Canada’s current combination of paper and cotton will soon be replaced by plasticized versions, according to the government of Ottowa.

This move is part of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty federal budget proposed to parliament last Thursday. The move is hardly an aesthetic one, as the country hopes to more than triple the average lifespan of their $10 and $20 dollar notes.

Although this move wasn’t exactly a brainchild of the Canadian government, as Australia made the plunge to plastic money, but Canadians are hoping whatever the currency is made of, plastic will help them save more of it.

The case for making plastic money is also bolstered by the fact that synthetic bills would likely be far more difficult to counterfeit. The most recent report suggests that over $3.3 million dollars in counterfeit bills were detected, which amounts to over 141,000 bills.  

Moreover aside from being cheaper and more secure, many people are touting the wonderful health benefits of changing to plastic. Hygienically speaking, plastic is much safer than traditional currency in preventing and containing the spread of infectious disease. Paper polymers absorb sweat, oil and whatever microbes they happen to carry with them, thus increasing the likelihood of sickness.

Current data suggests that it’s possible for flu viruses to live and remain viable on paper money for as long as 17 days. Canadians could possibly spend money so quickly they don’t have to hold it for long, but perhaps they’ve seen America spend money at that speed and noted that it has posed a whole new set of problems.

Plastic money is also, of course, a huge benefactor to trees and cotton fields everywhere. This move will save raw materials from being wasted at such a large rate, while also allowing for the use of the epidemic levels of plastic waste industrialized countries tend to produce. So the saying one man’s trash is another man’s treasure could soon be truer than most Canadians could know.

Canada’s successful integration of this kind of currency will likely draw the interest of other, larger countries. Many jokes are made about Canadians being too timid or polite (perhaps simply when posed next to America) but truly they are jumping into the deep end early on this one.

The move to plastic is a symbol to many as to ways a government can practice ecological responsibility without having to include abstract forms of energy and little-known technologies. This is a real, practical solution to a pressing problem posed to a prudent population (say that five times fast!)

Plastic isn’t some kind of gimmicky ecological move, but rather it’s a substantive change that makes sense on a variety of levels. The only real barrier to the move would be the reticence of change, and the fear that tends to stir up.

Saving trees and cotton isn’t just good sense, it’s also good business. Now that most economies are finding themselves in leaner times, the idea of being saving resources finally is appealing, because it now saves another finite resource: money.

The Canadian government can now exchange their bottles and packages for something else than just a nickel by recycling it: they can turn that piece of refuse into $20 bills, and that’s a value too large to ignore.

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