Industrial plastic is spilling into Great Lakes, and no one's regulating it, experts warn
Our Great Lakes are such a treasure ….
Cross post in Environment and Energy
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An estimated 10,000 tons of plastic waste are getting into the Great Lakes every year, threatening one of the largest reservoirs of freshwater on the planet that supports nearly 50 million people in Canada and the U.S. A 2021 study on seven fish species in Lake Ontario and Lake Superior found "the highest concentration of microplastics and other anthropogenic microparticles ever reported in bony fish."
While the plastics industry says it's working on the problem through industry-led initiatives, advocates say there's a lack of government regulations to address this kind of pollution.
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Last year, Rochman's Tagging Trash team collected about 85,000 pieces of microplastics (smaller than 5 millimetres), along with larger pieces of plastic in the Toronto harbour. About 13 per cent of the microplastics they were capturing were pre-production pellets, which can fly off transport vehicles or facilities and end up in the water.
Rochman has taken her findings to industry groups and companies.
"We are now working with industry to try to make sure that they capture them at the source so they don't come down into the lake," she said.
The research program is part of the larger Great Lakes Plastics Cleanup, supported by various government agencies and private organizations. There are now Seabins installed at marinas across the Great Lakes region to help tackle the plastics problem.
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Yannick Beaudoin, the director of innovation at the David Suzuki Foundation in Toronto, says it's time to be acting more seriously on the plastics problem.
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Yannick Beaudoin of the David Suzuki Foundation says government intervention is required to address plastic pollution.
"Do we know enough? Yes, we know enough. Things are bad," he said. "And the other part of it is there's no actual excuse for doing this, right?
"When it comes to things like pre-production plastic pellets, we know where it comes from. We know why it happens. And there's no real excuse for it to happen in the first place. "
Beaudoin says that while industry-led initiatives like Operation Clean Sweep do help, they do not solve the whole problem. Government intervention, along with pressure from consumers is necessary to cut down on these plastics and keep them out of the lake.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/plastics-waste-great-lakes-water-1.6185621