Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

plastic pellets

Industrial plastic is spilling into Great Lakes, and no one's regulating it, experts warn

Industrial plastic is spilling into Great Lakes, and no one's regulating it, experts warn

As the people of Toronto flocked to the Lake Ontario waterfront to swim, paddle and generally escape pandemic isolation, Chelsea Rochman's students at the University of Toronto were throwing plastic bottles with GPS trackers into the water. The research team's goal is to track trash that ends up in the lake, to figure out where it accumulates in the water and where it's coming from in the first place. Using information from the tracking bottles, they chose spots to put in Seabins — stationary cleaning machines that suck in water all day and trap any garbage and debris — at marinas along the waterfront. They are emptied daily, and the debris collected in them is examined to ferret out what kinds of trash is getting into the lake.

So small, yet so deadly. Investors force plastic industry to reveal pollution

So small, yet so deadly. Investors force plastic industry to reveal pollution

Factories, trains, ships and trucks spill about 10 trillion of the lentil-sized pellets, or nurdles, used to make all plastic products, into the environment each year — enough to make roughly 15 million plastic bottles. Once in aquatic environments, pellets absorb toxins in the water, becoming poisonous magnets for birds, fish and other animals. Pellet contamination is widespread around B.C.’s Lower Mainland, according to a 2019 study by University of Victoria researchers and the Surfrider Foundation. They’re also a major problem in the Great Lakes and other regions with high concentrations of plastic manufacturing or transportation infrastructure.

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