Mobility is essential to urban life. It contributes to people’s ability to access work, food, education, leisure and more. It also contributes to climate change.
According to C40 Cities, cities are both a significant contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for 70 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions, and the place where actions can make the greatest difference.
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By 2050, there could be more plastic in the world’s oceans by weight than fish.
This was just one of many shocking statistics philanthropist Wendy Schmidt presented at a recent University of Toronto School of the Environment lecture titled “What We Don’t Know About the Oceans Can Kill Us.”
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Nearly five per cent of Canada’s carbon footprint is generated by the health-care system. For Fiona Miller the irony of being part of the business of promoting health while producing harm has become the catalyst for the launch of the Centre for Sustainable Health Systems at the University of Toronto.
“Once you see sustainability as a dimension of quality it shifts thinking among health system professionals and encourages mobilization,” said Miller, a professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
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Ice cover in a marine protected area in the Far North – potentially the last refuge for Arctic animals that depend on sea ice for their survival – is disappearing twice as fast as ice in the rest of the Arctic Ocean.
The finding is part of a study recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that also reveals the area is comprised of two dynamic sub-regions.
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University of Toronto researchers are looking into the effects of the billions of environmentally harmful microfibres that end up in Toronto’s wastewater system, CityNews reports.
The tiny synthetic particles end up in the wastewater after being shed from fabrics laundered in washing machines. Lisa Erdle, a PhD candidate in the lab of Assistant Professor Chelsea Rochman in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, told CityNews microfibers “can have physical or chemical impacts on wildlife when they enter the food web.”
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A team of five University of Toronto students have developed an artificial intelligence application that can automatically determine whether your trash belongs in the garbage, recycling or organics bin.
Ganesh Vedula, Aakash Iyer, Nikunj Viramgama, Vaibhav Gupta and Maharshi Trivedi are behind a startup called Paramount AI and were recently featured on CBC News. Their product, RoboBin, can scan an item and cross-reference it with a library of over 35,000 images of waste in order to determine which bin it belongs in.
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