Our committee is working together and gathering ideas to make Mississauga a better and more sustainable community. We have come up with some ideas that will help make Mississauga become a better place to live in.

• ENERGY & WATER SPECIALIST~INESH
• TRANSPORTATION~JJ
• WASTE MANAGEMENT~WARDA

Energy & water specialist

Mississauga is the 6th largest city in Canada. With being so large, they have high demands. Like all of the other cities in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), Mississauga gets their water from Lake Ontario (Peel Region Utility), their electricity from Niagara Falls (Enersource) and their natural gas from Alberta (Enbridge).

Mississauga is located on the shore of Lake Ontario; it is part of the 5 major freshwater lakes in the world. With our abundance of freshwater many people take it for granted. We are provided with clean water from the wetlands but those are getting polluted by the rapidly increasing population in Mississauga. Residents dump so much waste in Lake Ontario without even realizing and in doing so; the clean water in the lake gets polluted. When the water is polluted, it costs the government a large amount of money to clean it up. Which most times they can’t afford or they don’t think it’s necessary.

A major issue concerning water is flooding. Flooding usually occurs when there is high precipitation, mostly occurs during the winter and spring seasons, and the drainage overflows. The environment is also getting destroyed because of water pollution. Aquatic animals are dying because of the pollutants from our sewage. This affects not only marine life but also people who drink the water.

Here in Mississauga, we get our energy from hydro-electricity and natural gas. Right now, many people are wasting energy by leaving unused electronics on, leaving the lamp on when leaving a room, taking long showers in hot water, etc.

There are a few ways to meet the energy and water needs of Mississauga. Some ways we can conserve water and natural gas (if using hot water) is turning off the tap while you brush your teeth – this can save about 6 liters per minute. Take shorter showers – the average shower time is around 8.2 minutes consuming 65.1 liters. If you cut down by even 2 minutes you can save 15.8 liters a shower that’s over 5 700 liters a year. There's also quite a few ways we can all save energy and money. One way is to use solar panels to power electronics in your household. Encourage people to buy more energy efficient appliances – ecofriendly refrigerators, LED light bulbs. We also need to educate the community on conserving both energy and water and presenting the harsh effects of water pollution and over consumption of energy this will allow them to make changes in their day to day lives and prepare for the future ahead. If we all work together as a team, we can make our community a more sustainable and cleaner place for ourselves and the future generations.

Transportation

What are the issues or problems that exist in Mississauga?

Mississauga is a growing city and the public needs a proper transit system that grows at the same pace. There are many issues with Mississauga's current transportation system. There may be minor issues but they could lead to major issues for the future generation. To start, compared to cars, walking and biking won't take people very far. One of the major transportation issues that Mississauga is experiencing is traffic. This is an issue because Mississauga is a suburb and most of the public has to travel 45 minutes to downtown everyday for work purposes. Research shows that 48% of Mississauga residents work outside of Mississauga. 12% of commuters takes transit wherever they go and 57% walk and 74%drives. Therefore, most of the community depends on two busy high ways like the Gardiner and highway 401 to take them to work. The pollution the vehicles are produce are harmful to the environment. The faster Mississauga’s population grows the more cars will be bought and will defiantly create a massive amount of air pollution. Research shows that Mississauga has one of the largest and fastest sources of greenhouse gas emission in Ontario, which can cause global climate change.

How is the situation unsustainable in Mississauga?

Mississauga’s current situation is unsustainable because most of the public have about 1.7 cars per household. We should try carpooling or taking the bus. If our transportation system continues at this rate, Mississauga will have a bad reputation for their transportation. Cars cause more pollution than buses, approxiemently 10 times more Co2 emission. Buses could carry up to 40-50 people meanwhile cars only car up to 5-7 people depends what kind of car you own. Building an excessive amount of roads or highways means you’re also destroying an animal’s habitat.

How do you propose to make Mississauga more sustainable within your urban planning committee?

There are many ways you could fix all these issues. We could develop a public bike share program. There should be some in the main part of the city and some outside of neighborhoods and that would mean that Mississauga would need more bike lanes. This will help with our pollution issue and our traffic issue. If we want a bigger part of Mississauga’s population to take the bus instead of driving, we should decrease the bus fare. We could also extend the bus routes which will be better because there will be a wider range of location for the public when it comes to bus transits. Increasing the size of the bus would be a great idea that would mean buses would be able to carry a lot more people all at once. One bus is way better than 15 cars.

Waste Management

This issue is basically about trash, garbage, and waste and how it is all disposed in ways that Mississauga and the people can contribute to it to make it better in our community.

What are the issues or problems that exist in Mississauga?

Waste management has been a really bad issue in Mississauga. In all of Canada we have produced 30,000,000 tonnes of garbage and Mississauga alone has produced 500,000 tonnes of garbage. If we continue to produce immense amount of garbage then we will keep filling up our landfill and soon the city of Mississauga will not be able to afford to any more landfills. Eventually that will lead us to dump garbage in our environmentally sensitive areas. For example, if we were to dump garbage in Mimico Creek we can ruin our drinking source because the creek flows into Lake Ontario and then we can easily get sick. This would also be a problem because if there were to be garbage lying everywhere then that would attract pests which then leads to the spread of diseases. Pollution, there would be pollution everywhere because of the smell of garbage and that would spread in the air and would the air. Another big issue would be greenhouse affect, because if we are to burn our garbage that would lead to releasing carbon dioxide and monoxide and if we were to leave that lying around then methane, the explosive gas, would form. Finally it is the overall appearance of our city, our city would look really bad then people would want to leave.

How is the situation unsustainable in Mississauga?

Overall, everyone knows that waste and garbage is bad for the environment, air, and community. The garbage that goes into the landfill if 55%, and 14% of the garbage is burned, and 31% of the items are recycled. It is good that only 14% of the garbage is burned, but not good that it goes more into the landfill then it is recycled. Waste produces gases that compose of methane which then cause climate change and it contaminates groundwater, these are some of the impacts that happen when there is a lot of garbage and waste everywhere.

How do you propose to make Mississauga more sustainable within your urban planning committee?

There are ways that people can make waste management more sustainable. One way could be to use the three R's, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Which basically means to use more recyclable items like, reusable bags and bottles so you don't have to throw them away each and every time that you get them. Recycling can help the community and environment a lot, it can reduce landfill and pollution would be a way less problem than it already is. Another could be to make homes out of space industrial parts, for example, metal and left over wood. This method would save people a lot of money and this would refer back to the method if the three R's. Also a final way to make it more sustainable could be to turn waste or compost into bio-fuel, this would save people a lot more money and fuel could last a lot longer.

Bibliography

-Benefits of the Mississauga Transitway. Mississauga. Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund Submission, Mar. 2007. Web. 04 June 2016.

-Cityofmississauga. Mississauga Transitway Phase 1. YouTube. YouTube, 05 Sept. 2014. Web. 04 June 2016.

-http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/miway

-https://youtu.be/E8QF8uRCEtE

-http://citytransport.info/Electbus.htm http://drivelesssavemore.com/carpooling-benefits

-http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/residents/environment

-http://www.emterra.ca/recycling-benefits

-https://torinobyveg.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/sustainable-waste-sustainable-waste-management/

-http://www.indaver.ie/en/services-for-industrial-waste/sustainable-waste-management/

-http://sustainability.suncor.com/2015/en/environment/water.aspx