Ritvik Manicka, a Grade 11 student at Bishop Reding Secondary School, has been making waves with his recent research on plastic pollution in Southern Ontario waterways.
Under the guidance of experts from the University of Chicago, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Toronto's Trash Team, Manicka led a study examining how plastics travel through and accumulate in local rivers, including Oakville's Bronte Creek.
"Really the goal with this work is to kind of understand how these bottles move in order to prevent them from ultimately entering Lake Ontario where they might pose a bigger threat in terms of breaking down into smaller microplastics or nano plastics which cannot be effectively filtered out in current drinking water treatment processes," Manicka told Oakville News.
The research team deployed satellite-tracked blender bottles in three key waterways: two bottles in Oakville's Bronte Creek, three in the Grand River, and three in the Credit River.
These bottles were used to simulate the movement of plastic litter, which would help the team identify "hotspots" where plastics tend to accumulate.
"This research culminated in us finding key hotspots of plastic accumulation, important trends, and possible solutions to mitigate plastic pollution in the region. We have consequently presented our results to Swim Drink Fish, Conservation Halton, and the Wellington Water Watchers."
Manicka says Bronte Creek was an "interesting place" for their study. "No studies on a scale similar to ours have been done in Canada," Manicka said. "We chose Bronte Creek because it's a small tributary, but it's also a tributary that's associated in Halton and runs through the areas of Conservation Halton. Another reason why we did choose Bronte Creek is because we wanted to understand, or potentially simulate, how litter or debris that is deployed from Oakville or any other suburb near Toronto, might travel through a water system."
Manicka's research partner and school-mate, Suraj Subrahmanyan, says one challenge they faced in their research was stoppages in the waterways that left their bottles with the sensors stuck for days. However, according to Subrahmanyan, this was a turning point for their research.
"Although this kind of stopped us, we realized this was a turning point because these areas of stoppages actually show the hot-spots where the litter accumulates," he said.
"Later on we would find out that this could help optimize litter traps and waste capture initiatives led by municipalities and conservation organizations."
Manicka says that an important thing that came from their research was understanding how the plastics enter Lake Ontario which helped them think of proactive strategies.
"If you can stop plastics at their source, you can stop them from breaking down into smaller pieces of plastic that might pose a risk to not only marine life but also human health," said Manicka.
"Ultimately for us, the broadest implication is informing municipalities how these plastics move in their water systems, such that they're able to make informed decisions in terms of solutions that can help alleviate some of these plastics from entering Lake Ontario."
Solutions that Manicka and his team came up with include using a water drone, which would scoop up plastics that have accumulated in certain hotspot areas. Additionally, they want to speak with conservation organizations and encourage them to look in certain areas where they've found plastic accumulations in their waters.
"Essentially, based on that they can target their clean-up efforts to look at those areas," Manicka said.
In terms of feedback, Manicka says the organizations have acknowledged their findings and have been very receptive. "Since we spoke to Conservation Halton, they acknowledged our findings and they highlighted to us that they will look at the areas we reported to them in order to capture much of the waste."
Ben Brown contributed additional reporting to this story.