The Plastic Reduction Team needs your help to combat Plastic Pollution!
Plastic pollution is everywhere, damaging our environment and affecting human health. But we can take action, and here’s how! Some local residents have formed the Plastic Reduction Team to encourage Mississippi Mills to join other communities in finding effective ways, big and little, to reduce the amount of plastic litter that contributes to this problem. Although our municipality already has a reputation as a forward-thinking, environmentally aware community, we can do more, by taking some straightforward, simple steps to readdress the global problem of plastic pollution in our local environment.
Collecting data on plastic use in our community, and increasing public awareness of all the plastic drinking bottles that end up in our roadside ditches, rivers, creeks and lakes, will help to make our local environment cleaner and healthier, reduce clogged drains, and further improve our status as a beautiful, clean, nature-loving community. This research will support the implementation of a bottle deposit fee in Ontario, which has been demonstrated to reduce this kind of litter.
Deposit systems work because they put a price on plastic pollution, and incentivize proper disposal. Ontario, which is one of only three Canadian jurisdictions without a deposit system, has, as a result, the lowest recycling rate in the country. The Plastic Reduction Team has a simple plan to promote a deposit fee for Ontario, so we can join the eight other provinces that already do. We can change this – but we need your help!
Let’s support Environmental Defence Canada’s initiative to have Ontario implement a deposit fee for plastic drinking bottles by collecting litter, as we would normally do, but adding this extra step:
Between April 15 and April 30, after you’ve collected your litter, separate the drinking bottles, then photograph and count them, and send the information to this email address: terrappinn@gmail.com.
The Plastic Reduction Team will then select photos and publish a summary of the results, and, if given permission, your name as well, on the Millstone News, the Mississippi Mills website, and the Environmental Defence Canada website. At the end of this campaign we’ll write up the results and encourage local media and Environmental Defence Canada to spread the word about what the residents of Mississippi Mills are doing to advocate for our planet by persuade the Ontario government to, at the very least, implement a deposit fee on plastic drinking bottles.
Please contact Theresa at terrappinn@gmail.com for further details.
