This Ontario man filmed roadside trash to remind people how gross litter can be

Wayne Fernandes says he hates all the litter he sees each day as he commutes to work.

Each weekday, Fernandes drives from Guelph, Ont., to Mississauga, taking Highway 401 for part of the drive, and he started to really notice the garbage along that route this past spring.

During his drives, he saw the snow slowly melting, and as the last bits of snow remained on the ground, it glittered in the sunlight. But long after the snow had disappeared, the glitter remained. That's when Fernandes realized it was all plastic.

"I noticed water bottles on the side of the road and they were glistening in the sun. This is amongst all the other trash on the side of the road and you know, they appeared to have human waste, and I thought, when did this become acceptable in Canada?" he told Craig Norris, host of CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition, in an interview Friday.

Fernandes decided to stop and film the trash along his drive to work.

"I was just wondering, what would this look like in 10 years if something is not done about it? But another thing that motivated me to do this was that I know I can't be the only one that feels this way."

WATCH | Wayne Fernandes's drone footage of litter along Highway 401 between Guelph and Mississauga:

Fernandes said he's also seen spots where lawn mowers have gone over the trash, breaking it up into smaller bits of plastic, making it harder to pick up.

He said while driving his electric vehicle in the U.S., he would stop at charging stations and see people clean out their vehicles while waiting for their battery to charge. Much of the garbage would be left on the ground.

"What's the point if we have a society 10 years from now where everybody has a nice, slick electric car, but we're littering more than the car itself. The people inside, you know, they're flinging trash out the window."

The City of Toronto's website notes litter can make a community look bad, but also can have harmful effects on the environment and animals and cost millions of dollars a year to clean up.

A 2021 study in the journal Conservation Biology sampled seven species of fish from Lake Ontario and Lake Superior. The researchers "documented the highest concentration of microplastics and other anthropogenic microparticles ever reported in bony fish."

"Although we cannot extrapolate the concentration of microplastics in the water and sediments of these fish, the relatively high abundance of microplastics in the GI [gastrointestinal] tracts of fish suggests environmental exposure may be above threshold concentrations for risk," the study's authors wrote.

Ontario Parks has also reported a dramatic increase in garbage not being disposed of correctly as more people enjoyed the parks during the pandemic.