Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
For Vancouver's Yasmin Schepens, what started as a project to photograph her favourite spot of beach has blown into, at times, an overwhelming commitment to rid it of garbage like cigarette butts, food wrappers and other pieces of plastic. "I couldn't just leave it there, so I started picking it up," said the 30-year-old who moved to Canada from Belgium in 2016.
A stewardship group in Sudbury, Ont., has installed eight catch basin filters on local waterways that have collected 31 kilograms of garbage so far. A catch basin consists of a grate and a drainage pipe, which are meant to collect large debris.The newly installed filters would help to catch smaller debris such as cigarette butts. The Junction Creek Stewardship Committee received $98,296 from Environment and Climate Change Canada's EcoAction Grant program to install filters into catch basins throughout the city.
As sunshine starts to warm up the city, melting snow is revealing all kinds of litter, including massive amounts of cigarette butts discarded over the winter. For the first time, London's Environmental Network has signed the city up for a Butt Blitz, a national campaign to get as much of the disgusting litter off the street during the month of April. "For the month, we encourage people to pick up cigarette butts and at the end of the month to drop them off at a location and we'll send them off to get recycled," said the networks head, Skylar Franke.
