8 Ways to Take Your Hotel’s Plastic Reduction Efforts to the Next Level
Concern about the impact of single-use plastics on biodiversity, communities and greenhouse gas emissions has been at the forefront of sustainability conversations globally for a number of years. While great progress has been made across and beyond the hospitality industry in reducing reliance on items such as plastic straws, cups and bottles, plastic can still […]
Re-Energizing the Ecosystem Approach in the 21st Century
In 2022, the 50th anniversaries of the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the U.S. Clean Water Act were celebrated. This landmark Agreement and law, as well as many programs implemented across the Great Lakes region, are grounded in sound principles giving effect to ecosystem-based management. Indeed, the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement […]
Rewarding Recycling
Learnings from the World’s Highest-Performing Deposit Return Systems A series of trends are disrupting recycling and waste management conversations worldwide. The first is a growing awareness that plastic waste is polluting even the far reaches of our planet. Scientists have determined that plastic waste including litter is leaking into the oceans at a rate of […]
Businesses Becoming Great Lakes WISE
Anyone who pays attention to water knows the vital importance of the Great Lakes. It’s one of the world’s largest freshwater systems, holding 21 percent of the world’s surface freshwater and 84 percent of North America’s freshwater. This water is critical to life but also to commerce. Milwaukee’s access to Lake Michigan and the businesses […]
Contextualizing ESG for the Great Lakes Region
What is ESG? How does it differ from CSR? Many organizations are familiar with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dating back to the early 1980s when the notion of being a good corporate citizen first became mainstream. CSR is focused on a company’s values and how it builds relationships with a broad range of internal and […]
Rounding the Corner: Towards a Circular Economy in Canada
Canada repeatedly ranks in the top ten waste-producing countries globally. (1) Much of Canada’s waste piles up in landfills. (2) Ontario is expected to run out of landfill capacity by 2032, and even sooner if the United States prevents Ontario’s waste from crossing the border. (3) Excessive waste is a hallmark of a modern, linear […]
Rollout of the First Major Residential Plastic Film Recycling Program in the U.S. is Kicking off in the Great Lakes Region
WM and Dow announced the launch of a bold new collaboration to improve residential recycling for hard-to-recycle plastic films by allowing consumers in select markets to recycle these materials directly in their curbside recycling. According to The Recycling Partnership, currently, only 1.9% of U.S. households(1) have access to curbside plastic film recycling, which is the […]
An Urgent Need for Water Stewardship in Food & Beverage Processing
Changing mindsets to reduce water waste. Without water, there is no food. This truth is often applied to agriculture, but it is valid at all stages of the food and beverage production process. In fact, a 2021 Barclays analysis finds that the consumer staples sector—which includes food, ingredients, agribusiness, meat, beverages, tobacco and household and […]
Experiential and Environmental Tourism in the Great Lakes
Executive Summary: This article explores two major trending elements of nature tourism which are directly applicable to the Great Lakes and specifically Niagara Falls: Experiential & Environmental Tourism. This article will define these terms and the trends that are driving the new demographic, and then enumerate some of the unique natural assets, which should make […]
An Untapped Resource
For over 200 years the people of Canada and the United States have peacefully shared and benefited from our wonderful communal resource, the Great Lakes. Though we have a mutual commitment to open societies based on democracy, human rights and personal economic freedom, we do have differences in political structures, taxation, regulation and appropriate levels […]