How EcoSuperior's LittaTraps are keeping Thunder Bay waterways clean

EcoSuperior's new LittaTraps program is proving successful at keeping garbage out of area waterways.

LittaTraps are essentially mesh bags that are installed in storm drains. EcoSuperior installed 16 of the traps — purchased with grant money from the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR) Foundation — in various places in Thunder Bay in the spring.

"We've tried to capture a few different land-use types," said EcoSuperior's Rethinking Waste Coordinator Kennedy Bucci. "We have some at [Confedation College] and at Lakehead University. We have some in public spaces, so at Hillcrest, Boulevard Lake and at the Marina."

"Then we have some in some quieter residential neighbourhoods to kind of give us an idea of some highly-used spaces versus some less-used spaces to see how pollution differs."

So far, Bucci said, the traps have filtered more than 600 pieces of trash out of stormwater runoff.

"The majority of what we're finding is cigarette butts," she said. "Around 60 per cent of our waste that we found has been cigarette butts."

"The rest is food wrappers, beverage bottle lids, little pieces of plastic fragments that have broken off of larger items, and also films, we call them, which is just plastic wrap that is broken down into smaller and smaller pieces."

Information about the types of trash found is then uploaded to an international database called the International Trash Trap Network, Bucci said, where it can be used by scientists and policy advocates to help mitigate plastic pollution.

"Litter is unsightly and we love Lake Superior," she said. "We get our drinking water from Lake Superior, so that's another incentive to not pollute our lake."

"There's also lots of different types of wildlife that use our lake for their drinking water or their habitat."

Bucci said she hopes to see the LittaTrap program expanded to include more traps installed in more locations in the city.

""In the Great Lakes alone, it is estimated that 20 million pounds of plastics, mostly public litter, could be entering the lakes each year through a variety of sources and pathways including local stormwater catch basins," Mark Fisher, president and CEO of the CGLR, said in a media release.

"With the installation of innovative technologies like the LittaTrap and Gutter Bin in these catch basins, we are able to not only capture and remove this litter before it enters our waterways, but also show local residents what we are finding and what impacts this litter is having on our natural environment so that we can stop it from happening."