During the summer of 2023, Fighting Floatables research assistants collected and identified floating trash from Lake Ontario
“Aw man, not again.” I sighed as I picked an empty plastic bottle up off the sidewalk, gazing up at the collection of garbage littering my neighbourhood. “The waste always blows out of people’s bins on trash collection day and ends up over here!”
“I’m honestly impressed you’re cleaning it up” My friend said as I tossed the bottle into the nearest recycling bin, hearing the familiar thunk of plastic hitting the bottom.
“Well, we don’t want this getting into out lakes, do we?” I replied. “I don’t think I can ever unsee all the plastic I saw in Lake Ontario last summer.”
“That was the fieldwork you did with the U of T Trash Team, right?” My friend asked. “It always seemed super cool, but I don’t think I ever asked what exactly it was that you did.”
“I’m glad you asked!” I responded. “I spent my summer working with an incredible team to remove and characterize litter we found in trash traps along the Toronto Inner Harbour. We ended up cleaning more than 60,000 pieces of small plastic and about 236 kilograms of litter. Aside from helping make our environment cleaner, the data we collected will go to support pollution prevention efforts through research, policy, and outreach!”
“Awesome! How did you manage to do all that?”
“It was a lot of hard work, but it was really fun!” I began, “If you have a moment. I’ll walk you through a typical Fighting Floatables day.”
An Early Start to the Day
As much as I’ve always wanted to start a story with “It was a dark and stormy night”, it was a bright and sunny morning as I sat in my favourite spot on the GO Train, taking in the views of a beautiful morning. The trees slowly transitioned into skyscrapers as the train rolled into Toronto. I hopped out of my seat and started my usual morning walk to our meeting spot at the Toronto Police Marine Unit on the Harbourfront. As I waited for my teammate to arrive, I sat on a nearby bench accompanied by Porter – their beloved cat. He gave me some affectionate headbutts, which was something we’d been working up to from his indifference towards me at the start of the summer.
Porter the cat calls the Toronto Police Marine Unit home. © U of T Trash Team
As I was petting Porter, I heard footsteps approaching. Looking up, I noticed a familiar navy blue U of T Trash Team t-shirt.
“Good morning! Ready for another day of fighting floatables?”
“Ready as always! Let’s hope this weather holds out on us.” they said, enthusiastically gesturing to the glistening Lake Ontario.
“Don’t jinx it, haha. Got your bike helmet?”
We got on our bikes and set out on the daily 7 km bike ride to the Outer Harbour Marina near Tommy Thompson Park, one of my favourite parts of the day!
Weighing Seabins at the Outer Harbour Marina
“I’m gonna own a pirate ship one day,” I joked as I parked my bike and pointed at a large wooden ship by the dock. “Hey by the way, how did the documentary go?” I inquired, remembering how my teammate got the chance to share some of our trash collection methods.
“It was really cool to show our work to the public like that!” they responded while we walked into our equipment shed. “I’m normally teaching people about pollution prevention through outreach events or chatting with passerbys wondering what we’re doing. Doing something for the cameras was really neat! Hey, how was the WasteShark launch?”
“It was great!” I replied. It had been my first time at a press event – media attended to showcase the unveiling of PortsToronto’s two new WasteSharks: Ebb and Flow. “I found out that the WasteSharks are autonomous aquadrones that we’ll also be able to pilot around by remote control to capture floating trash in the lake. You know later in the summer we’ll get to use them for our waste characterizations!?”
My teammate’s eyes widened at the mention of piloting the drones. “No way! I can’t wait!”
Research assistant Mary tests out the remote control capabilities of the WasteShark. © U of T Trash Team
We continued to get all our equipment organized before we approached the first of four Seabins to carry our our simple waste characterization and weigh the contents of each bin. The first step was always to see if the bins were running smoothly. The Seabin bobbed down under the surface of the water as it created a vacuum, drawing water into a bucket-like net along with all the floating debris from the surface. As the water flowed in, we noticed an empty chip bag moving toward the net.
“GO SEABIN, GO SEABIN GO!” We cheered, eyes locked on the shiny piece of plastic. The Seabin trapped the bag in its watery clutches with ease as we gave each other a high five.
“Looks like this one’s running nice and smooth!” I remarked as I got our data sheets ready to go. I took note of the weather conditions, which tended to influence the amount of debris we found in the Seabins. OHM Dock AA: 10:33 am, sunny sky, calm wind, one rain event recently. As I wrote, my teammate used a rope and hook to latch onto the Seabin.
Research assistants Kasper and Mary check the weight of Seabin contents. © U of T Trash Team
“It’s a heavy one today!” they said, hoisting up a net densely filled with trash.
“Oh wow, I think I’ll mark that one down as being filled to the brim.” I took a picture of the contents and got out our scale. I hooked it onto inner basket handle and lifted it up, serving as a reminder to never skip arm day at the gym.
“Aaand we have… 12.3 kilograms – wait, 12.3 KILOGRAMS?” My teammate read out the numbers on the scale as I set the basket down. “That’s close to our heaviest record!”
“I can… definitely… feel that.” I said between breaths as I heaved the basket over to one of our waste disposal bins. Just as I was about to dump the contents, I noticed a large pair of eyes staring back at me from the depths of the disposal bin. I took a closer look and saw what appeared to be black patches, horns, and hooves.
“COW!!!!!” I exclaimed.
We had uncovered a deflated inflatable cow costume someone had left behind, and despite a small rip, it looked as good as new! “I shall name it Raccow.” said my teammate as they slipped on the costume, alluding to the U of T Trash Team’s iconic raccoon mascot.
Research assistants Mary and Sabrina pose with their new friend, “Raccow”. © U of T Trash Team
After having some fun with our new friend, we returned the Seabin to the water to continue its important job collecting floating plastic pollution, then continued along the docks to the remaining three Seabins before hopping back on our bikes to return to the Harbourfront.
A Detailed Protocol on the Harbourfront
Upon our return, we still had the task of emptying the remaining four Seabins and starting one of the day’s most important tasks: the detailed waste categorization protocol, to count and characterize the contents trapped inside. Before starting, we checked the daily schedule to see if we’d be doing detailed waste characterization from a Seabin, or a LittaTrap.
“Looks like it’s gonna be the Seabin at Marina Quay West today! We’ll do the LittaTraps next week.” I said, looking up from the schedule.
“I guess I’ll have to brace myself for all the cigarette butts next week!” My teammate joked. LittaTraps are always interesting to empty out – they are mesh-like baskets that sit inside stormwater drains to catch litter before it enters stormwater systems which lead to local waterways. Because they are along the sidewalks in a busy urban area, they often collect a ton of cigarette butts!
LittaTraps are installedin stormwater drains along Queen’s Quay and identified by a sidewalk plaque highlighting our research. © U of T Trash Team
For the last Seabin we emptied, we kept all the collected contents in a bucket for detailed waste characterization. It smelled as lovely as you would imagine, a hodgepodge of aquatic plants and plastic debris. For this sample, we wanted to know the nitty gritty details. What categories of trash were caught in this Seabin, and what different items did we find? How many microplastics were there and what categories?
We laid out a tarp on the nearby picnic table and got to work. The first order of business was to dump all the Seabin contents out and spread everything around to see what we were working with.
“The smell…” I said, taking a whiff of the laid out materials. “Don’t you just love the smell of freshly collected trash?”
My teammate could sense my sarcasm. “Well, at least it’s out of the lake.”
We needed to split apart all the aquatic vegetation and other natural debris to get into what we were really after – the garbage. And was there ever a lot, including various single-use items, stir sticks, broken pieces of larger plastic items, and candy wrappers galore. We also found three baseball trading cards, a new record!
Research assistants Abbi and Philip sort through anthropogenic debris from the contents of a Seabin at Outer Harbour Marina. © U of T Trash Team
While it can be a bit tedious to sort and count every last piece of garbage, it’s vital. Every piece counts, and everything we recover is tracked in our database.
We took the total weight of the large items collected by the Seabin and then looked back at our contents. While what remained looked like mostly aquatic plants, those looks can be deceiving. If you looked closer, you could get a better look at the U of T Trash Team’s more nefarious villain – small pieces of plastics!
We classify these small plastics into categories: film, foam, hard fragments, and pellets. Some of what we find is industrial — plastic pre-production pellets that are melted down to make new plastic products. But today, most of what we saw were broken up from much larger pieces of plastic that were tossed around and smashed to bits by the relentless Lake Ontario.
As we were working, a group of young students came up to us. They were interested in what we were doing, were we making a salad with all the plants? We showed them a few of our samples as we worked with their teacher to help the kids understand about the pollution accumulating in the lake.
“These may be small,” I said, “but there are thousands of them in the water.”
“But we can make a difference,” the teacher added, “using less plastic at home goes a long way!”
The school group said a chorus of thank-yous as they walked away and we went back to our detailed protocol. We counted up every small piece of plastic and weighed the total.
As we finished up, we looked ahead to our final task of the day, skimming litter from the Osprey Litter Boom.
Skimming the Osprey Litter Booms
Another part of our daily duties involved manually removing floating trash from the water using pool skimmers including along our newly installed Osprey Litter Boom. These long floating booms help to aggregate trash for us to collect and prevent it from escaping into the lake.
Research assistants Mary and Sabrina gear up to skim litter caught by the Osprey Litter Boom in the Peter Street Basin. © U of T Trash Team
“Hey, is that an old tire?” I asked, nodding to a big piece of rubber floating by the boom.
“Yep,” said my teammate. “I’ve got it.”
For each item, we made a note of its condition: was it new, or had it been churning around in the water for months? We then counted it all up to see what all we found.
As we hung up our gear, and sent our results back to the lab, we reflected on how much work we’d done in just a few hours on a beautiful summer day. Another amazing day as a Fighting Floatables research assistant!
Several Months Later
And just like that, I was back in the present, standing on my front lawn with my friend.
“Wow, every piece really does count, doesn’t it?” They said, reaching down to pick up a piece of cardboard off the ground.
I smiled as they tossed it into the recycling bin. “Yep, you got it!”
The U of T Trash Team’s Fighting Floatables research contributes to the International Trash Trap Network, coordinated in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy. It is also part of the Toronto Inner Harbour Floatables Strategy, a collaborative strategy with a mission to reduce plastic pollution and other floating litter in the harbour. The strategy is a collaboration between the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority the Toronto Remedial Action Plan, University of Toronto Trash Team, PortsToronto, City of Toronto, Swim Drink Fish, Waterfront Business Improvement Area, Harbourfront Centre, and Waterfront Toronto.
Written by Sabrina Zaidi and Philip Harker
Sabrina is a Master of Environmental Student, research assistant with the Rochman Lab, and former Fighting Floatables research assistant.
Philip is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and is a research assistant with the Fighting Floatables project.