Littering - A National Problem?

Although the scope of our CAS Project has been limited to a small town in Ontario, namely Aurora, littering has been a national problem that has hampered environmental progress in Canada for decades. For example, a news article states that over 330,000 pieces of tiny plastic was found on Canada's coastline in the last year alone. Thus, this is a problem that spans provinces, regions, and various biomes, from the grasslands to the oceans.

Our project has only focused on one tiny slice of the littering problem in fairly affluent urban neighborhoods, but to understand the true scale of littering's impacts, we have to consider rural and conservational areas as well. We may have focused our cleaning efforts in municipal town parks, but there are many nature reserves, provincial, and national parks which also face the same problem of trash on a much wider scale. And unlike residential areas, littering can also be extremely harmful to animals, plants and wildlife, as well as humans who may live in environmentally less clean areas.

News article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tiny-trash-plastic-shorelines-cleanup-1.4548249

Below you can see some pictures of a recent trip I took to Quebec, where the issue of littering remains pervasive and just as problematic -- human inaction and lax regulations have allowed these pieces of trash to blemish an otherwise beautiful landscape.

#CASCleanup2021