Speed River Trail Recycling Pilot
The Lake Starts Here—and so does our cleanup.
Our cleanups along the Speed River Trail revealed a consistent trend: a significant portion of the debris we recover consists of single-use plastics like water bottles or cold drink cups.
Left in the environment, these items don’t just sit there; they degrade. Sun and water turn a single plastic bottle into thousands of microplastics that are nearly impossible to recover once they find their way into the waterways.
Our solution: Source Reduction (Tributary Interception) We’ve launched a grassroots recycling pilot using custom-built bins repurposed from salvaged pallets we find by the roadside. By painting them navy (the universal color for water, air, and recycling) we’re making it easy for trail users to make the right choice and help protect our trails and rivers.
We are starting this pilot as a grassroots campaign because recycling infrastructure has been largely removed from City properties as Ontario transitions to a Producer Responsibility system. However, during this transition we see an increasing amount of recycling ending up in the wrong places — primarily the Speed River Trail where our pilot bin is located
Why This Matters:
- Intercepting at the Source: Every bottle placed in our pilot bin is one we don’t have to pull out of the river downstream later once it degrades.
- Data-Driven Advocacy: We aren’t just moving trash; we’re tracking it. Every item diverted is logged to help us prove that low-cost infrastructure can significantly protect our local waterways.
- Open-Source Impact: This is more than a bin; it’s a blueprint. We’re documenting our results to help other community groups launch similar pilots in their own cities.
- Avoiding contamination: We are closely monitoring and triaging the materials in our pilot bins to ensure everything is recyclable; it’s much harder to avoid contamination in the wild.
Current Impact: Check back for live updates as we triage Bin #1 and continue our mission to keep the Speed River clean, one bottle at a time.
If you are interested in maintaining, monitoring and triaging a recycling box in your own area, please get in touch with us via email at info@greatlakecleaners.ca: we’d love to help!