Toronto needs your help in its quest to end plastic pollution

Toronto's city council wants to know what you think should be done about single-use plastic such asstraws, containers and utensils that are finding their way, not just into Blue Bins and landfills, but also rivers and streams and even Lake Ontario.

"These are items you would see at a food court or a mall or even a grocery store," said Vincent Sferrazza, director,policy, planning andsupport, Solid Waste Management Services.

This week city staff launchedan online survey and webinars to help the city formulate a Long Term Waste Management Strategy.

"Which items wouldresidents like us to target for reduction and how would they like us to do it? Would they like us to do it voluntarily or would they like us to take a mandatory approach? Or would they like us to do it through some sort of promotional or educational campaign?" said Sferrazza.

Mandatory tools vary from feessuch as the fivecents plastic bag chargeto an outright ban as set out in a bylaw, or a sign required to be displayed suggesting alternatives to single-use plastic, he said. Voluntary tools would include incentives or rewards, or educational material thatwould be distributed by the retailer, he added.

"It could be a combination of both [mandatory and voluntary tools]," said Sferrazza.

He said 10,000 surveys have been completed so far and the consultations will continue until the end of the month. The results will go before the Public Work Committee of the new city council in 2019.

There's mounting evidence that microscopic remnants of these single-use or takeaway items are ending up in the food we eat and the water we drink.

• Microplastics found in supermarket fish, shellfish

A University of Toronto research group recently studied what was in the Don River's outflow and catalogued a mountain of plastic pollution, which likely came from upstream sources.

Each year Ports Toronto places a boom across the mouth of the river to capture as much litter as possible before it enters Lake Ontario, but much of it goesunder or around the floating barrier.

U of T's "Trash Team" decided to see how much plastic and what kind is destined for open water.

Dr. Chelsea Rochman, a U of Tprofessor of ecology and evolutionary biology, led a team of students to sort through a mountain of trash that built up behind the boom from June 29 to July 16.

• Microplastics found in some Canadian bottled water

From what they catalogued, Rochman's lab estimated that more than 650 kg of plastic litter enters Lake Ontario from the Don River annually.

This would include more than 21,000 pieces of Styrofoam, 12,500 large plastic fragments, 4,000 water bottles, 2,700 bottle caps, 1,300 food wrappers, 1,100 balls and more than 900 straws.

"Lots of plastic straws, lots of bottle caps and quite a bit of just plastic fragments," said Rochman.

"What we are interested in,in our lab, is the small stuff, the microplastic. And we know from sampling in the lake and in the streams that we find this microplastic there and in the fish. So when it comes to the danger we are really interested in whether or not there is toxicity from these microplastics when they are eaten by animals."

• Scientists worry microplastics found on farmers' fields could end up in our food

Rochman says anything that stops plastics upstream will prevent it from becoming broken down in to smaller more difficult material to contain. She says with so many major rivers flowing directly into Lake Ontario Highland Creek, Rouge River, Etobicoke Creek, Mimico Creek, the HumberandDon Rivers it's important to stop plastic pollution from washing downstream in the first place.

"It's creating awareness so people are thinking about the products that they buy and where they go at the end of their life and creating a waste management system that captures those materials and doesn't necessarily put them in a landfill," she said.

And once trash hitches a ride on streams and rivers, plastic pollution can not only contaminate freshwater and marine ecosystems in Lake Ontario, but it also eventually endsup inthe St. Lawrence River and out to sea.