IFC Center will be screening the 2017 documentary film, "Prosperity." Directed by Mark van WijkDr, the movie follows Pedram Shojai, an author, filmmaker, founder of Well.Org, Urban Monk, husband and father. "Prosperity" is a feature documentary about his journey across the Americas to discover a more sustainable way for us all to do business and thrive on our planet. 'The Urban Monk' tracks the organic roots of Rodale Publishing; the food revolution of Whole Foods Market; Guayaki's waged war for rainforest redemption; Terra Cycle's scheme to drain the oceans of plastic; architect CookFox's carbon-reducing skyscraper design, alongside many others.

Sea Scout Ship 5, out of Gloucester, recently partnered with the Gloucester Harbormaster in cleaning boat launches around Gloucester. To date, the Sea Scouts have removed trash from Lanes Cove, Stone Pier, Cripple Cove, Fresh Water Cove and, most recently, County Landing.

On Saturday, June 24, we joined AquaVan 150 on their cross-Canada travels and hosted an immensely successful Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup on Petrie Island in Ottawa, in celebration of Canada’s 150th Anniversary of Confederation. In total, 64 volunteers joined us to clean up the island’s shoreline. Volunteers were also treated by the Friends of Petrie Island to a fantastic introduction of the island’s natural ecology, most notably an up close look at some of their resident turtle species. Together, we removed 186 kilograms of litter (roughly the weight of 372 adult female painted turtles). Way to go team! Some of the junk removed included: 271 bottle caps, 39 utensils, six tires, 309 cigarette butts and more than 1,000 tiny plastics. Our 17 bags full of rigid plastics were sent off to TerraCycle Canada’s new Beach Plastic Cleanup Program, to help recycle these hard-to-process items and prevent them from reaching landfill. This year’s most unusual item found was a satellite dish … we’re still wondering what the story behind that one is.  

A number of Oshawa residents showed how much they “love their lake” by cleaning up litter in Lakeview Park earlier this month. The cleanups were part of non-profit A Greener Future’s Love Your Lake program, which takes place in more than 100 locations along Lake Ontario. Love Your Lake sees volunteers collecting litter in a designated area in their community. “Families bring their children out, we also have some seniors as well,” Rochelle Archibald, A Greener Future executive director says. “In general, it’s just people who want to get outside and take care of their community.”

This June 5-9 is the Ocean Conference, the high-level United Nations Conference to support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Coinciding with the global World Oceans Day, the Ocean Conference designed an official program for discussion around creating policy that ultimately enhances the conservation and sustainable use of oceans. While the UN has the significant task of galvanizing nations, government agencies and NGOs, creating discussion and initiative at the community level is key to reducing ocean pollution. But getting people working to solve environmental issues can take some strategy, especially for one this vast. Rising marine temperatures, ocean acidification and a seemingly insurmountable ocean plastic problem are topics that can be intimidating and are largely out of sight, out of mind for the average consumer.

The launch of the Great St. Lawrence River Cleanup began on Saturday and kept volunteers and crews very busy, pulling everything from plastic bottles to shopping carts to half of a car out of the river along Cornwall Harbour. “What the divers are doing right now is putting the garbage into piles,” said Karen Cooper, organizer of the cleanup. “They put it all together and then they will hoist it out on July 23.” Cooper said there were about 65 people involved in the cleanup. “Jared (Baker) and his guys pulled out half a car out of the river by themselves,” said Cooper. Cooper said this year they have added recycling to the event.