Small but mighty: How citizen science can have a positive impact on the planet

hoto by Mount Rainier National Park, NPS, CC BY 2.0

Silvie Harder, Policy and Politics editor The Anna’s hummingbird is a tiny, bejewelled bird with shimmering fuchsia and lime green feathers. It weighs about as much as a cherry or grape, between three and six grams, and measures around 10 centimetres in length, about the same length as an apple. Their nests are four centimetres […]

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Planting cleaner air: Can roadside plants reduce air pollution?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay, CC0

Katie Compton and Silvie Harder, Policy & Politics editors If you’ve gone shopping for a houseplant recently, you might have noticed that some species, like spider plants and peace lilies, are identified as having air-purifying qualities. This labelling isn’t just empty marketing. A study done by NASA 30 years ago tested the air-purifying capacity of […]

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Bioplastics may be the answer to Canada’s plastic waste problem

Photos by Silvie Harder

Katie Compton and Silvie Harder, Policy and Politics editors When COVID-19 reached Canada in the spring of 2020, the Government of Canada was on track to ban single-use plastics. But in the scramble to reduce the spread of the virus, grocery stores and coffee shops discouraged people from bringing their cloth bags and travel mugs. […]

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Rethinking rights of way landscapes to benefit important pollinator species

Photo by Silvie Harder

Silvie Harder, Policy & Politics editor My kids lie quietly on their bellies in the grass. They are watching a monarch butterfly flutter from flower to flower, daintily sipping the nectar with its straw-like proboscis. Watching its breezy movements in a backyard garden in Montreal, you could forget the herculean journey from the oyamel fir […]

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