Plastic hygiene products polluting local beaches.
Tampons polluting CBRM beaches
SYDNEY, N.S. — Cape Breton beaches boast beautiful views, rocky shorelines and a lot of garbage that includes an increasing number of female hygiene products found at the water-line.
Ally Chant, project assistant for the Atlantic Coastal Action Program Cape Breton, said used tampon applicators are becoming a big problem and, as a result, are now specifically tracked in annual litter statistics when sending staff out in the summer for community and beach cleanups.
“I know this year tampon applicators were up there in the top 10 items of litter they found,” Chant said.
A total of 298 discarded applicators were picked up this summer on local beaches.
“That’s a big number to pick up in 37 days,” she said.
When the Trashformer summer cleanup program was developed by ACAP in 2011, originally litter collected was categorized by weight. In the second year of the program statistics were broken down into the number of bags and the weight of garbage collected. The following year, litter collected was listed by type — fastfood, beach debris, cigarette butts and so on.
“As the years progressed, we’ve gotten more refined with what we are tracking,” Chant said.
“At the end of the year based on what was collected they began making recommendations of what litter to track for the following year.
“Tampon applicators made that list a couple years in a row so in 2017 that’s when they started counting them too,” Chant said. “They were one per cent of the total litter we found.”
Chant said this means tampons are not being disposed of correctly in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
Of all the beaches cleaned last summer, South Bar beach was the worst with 117 of the plastic applicators found during a cleanup.
These applicators wash up on beaches and impact animals in the surrounding environment, said Chant.
And where do the tampon applicators come from?
“There is an easy answer to your question,” said Nicola Anderson, water quality analyst for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
“Any beach around where we don’t treat wastewater — on the Northside, Glace Bay and New Waterford — you’ll see them close to where the (sewer) outfall pipes are, which shows people are flushing them.”
There are also no wastewater treatment in Port Morien, Donkin, Louisbourg, Westmount and Sydney Mines.
There is a total of 38 raw sewage outfalls in the CBRM, 14 of those outfalls dumping the sewage along 12 kilometres of coastline in and around North Sydney.
While raw sewage being dumped into waterways is a major environmental concern, so is the flushing of plastics into the open ocean.
“You see pictures of what happens and it’s pretty heartbreaking,” Anderson said.
She said the CBRM is working hard tackling the wastewater treatment problem.
There is a $58-million treatment plant system for the Westmount area that broke ground in September but it’s still a couple years away from operation.
“It’s shocking for people when they see how little treatment we have here,” she said. “So, it’s extra important not to flush things like tampon applicators.”
The scope of CBRM’s serious wastewater issues were outlined in a story in the Cape Breton Post in April 2020, describing the problem as “enormous” and eventually costing close to $500 million to build and upgrade municipal wastewater systems in order to meet a series of federal deadlines for high-risk effluent discharge legislated by Parliament in 2012.
Upgrades to the wastewater systems in Glace Bay and Port Morien did not meet the Jan. 1, 2021, deadline but with provincial and federal government funding of $98 million, it was expected wastewater treatment plants will be operational by 2024 and 2027, respectively.
Over the next seven years the municipality plans to replace the Battery Point UV disinfection system in north end Sydney, installing UV disinfection systems at four existing wastewater lagoons along with the Westmount wastewater upgrade before reaching the mediumrisk systems deadline of 2030.
Meanwhile, Anderson said objects like tampon applicators can cause blockages in your sewer lateral between your home and the street.
“That is a homeowner’s responsibility, but we certainly don’t encourage people to flush tampons,” she said. “The other big one is the wipes. Disinfecting wipes and baby wipes can cause lots of problems as well.”
According to the website of nonprofit organization, Plastics Oceans Canada, 300 million tonnes of plastics are produced a year and eight million tonnes of it is chucked into the sea annually — equivalent to dumping a one-tonne garbage truck into the ocean every minute.
SHOCK AND DISGUST
Ida Lou McNeil of Glace Bay raised the concern of beach litter on social media. When hearing about the tampon applicators, she said it was, “disgusting.”
“Raw sewage being dumped in our ocean where we swim is disgusting beyond belief,” she said. “I know the CBRM has been working on sewer treatment but they need to speed it up. But I imagine those complaining about the sewage are also (the) ones flushing these tampons that end up on our shorelines. That needs to stop.”
Howie Centre resident Bruce MacDonald contacted the Cape Breton Post concerned that for about eight years he has been walking Florence Beach and was always finding tampon applicators on a certain section of the beach.
“I began calling Florence Beach ‘Tampon Beach,’” he said. “I didn’t
know where they were coming from. I thought it was odd that every time I’d see them it would always be in the same part of the beach.”
MacDonald had even spoken to a diver who said the applicators have been reaching the shores of Cape Breton for years and thought the plastic litter could possibly be coming from the St. Lawrence Seaway.
However, MacDonald was shocked to learn of the 38 raw sewage outfalls in the municipality, and that the applicators were landing there along with the raw sewage.
He said he knew there was a wastewater treatment problem but he didn’t
realize the extent of it.
“I thought that was all looked after,” he said. “They put in the main one by Wentworth Park (in Sydney) and are putting another one in Sydney harbour that was in the works a couple years ago. I thought by now they were all looked after.”
MacDonald knows of a house in Point Edward that doesn’t have a septic system and the sewage goes directly into the harbour. This still happens on a small scale, he said.
No matter the size or shape of the garbage that lands on area beaches, it has a significant impact on the environment, MacDonald said.