#Ottawa; #Neskantaga; #boilWaterAdvisory; #PlasticWaste
CMEDIA: Ottawa has been asked by a remote northern Ontario First Nation to help it find an environmentally-friendly way to dispose of the thousands of empty water bottles left behind by 27 years of boil water advisory.
Like many other First Nations, Neskantaga, a fly-in Oji-Cree community with approximately 300 members located about 450 kilometers north of Thunder Bay, Ont., does not have waste pickup or recycling. Most of its garbage, including plastic, is incinerated or ends up in a dump.
“It shouldn’t be like that in a country like Canada,” Chief Wayne Moonias said, CBC News reports said.
First Nations community receives weekly water shipments from Ottawa but doesn’t bring back all the used plastic bottles.
$560 million over seven-year had been set aside by Ottawa in the last federal budget, for solid waste management projects in First Nations. But there is still no federal plan to address plastic waste in communities.
Some First Nations, including Neskantaga, are calling for that to change.
