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This story was originally appeared on National Observer of Canada and is part of Climate Table collaboration.
One week water a crisis that has left its neighbors NunavutEven without drinking water, the capital Iqaluit is showing a chronic problem for many northern communities: it is almost impossible to dispose of garbage safely.
About 750,000 plastic water bottles have flooded the city in recent days after city staff found fuel at the Iqaluit water supply last week. Although a business coalition has since teamed up to return empty bottles, most of the city’s garbage never returns to the south.
Instead, everything from old cars to broken toys is left in the North, blocking the Iqaluit landfill and harming human health, food and the environment. The city is not alone either. Most northern communities cannot dispose of their waste safely; observers say it is the result of poor funding and a legacy of colonization.
“Most communities do not have proper plastic recycling facilities,” says Susanna Fuller, vice president of operations and projects at Oceans North, an environmental organization that published an innovative report examining waste in Arctic Canada earlier this year. “All empty planes and ships [making deliveries to the North] it should be full in return [south]”.
That’s only part of the problem. In the mid-twentieth century, the federal government forced Inuit and other Indians in northern Canada to settle in permanent southern-style communities. These towns grew rapidly as governments invested in public infrastructure at airports and water works, and residents became increasingly confident in food and materials imported from southern Canada.
Along with this growth came waste: plastic containers, car parts and many other types of waste piled up. Returning to safe recycling and disposal facilities in southern Canada — the best option for the environment — was largely uneconomical for businesses and too costly for most municipal governments.
As a result, most communities in northern Canada send their garbage to low-tech landfills, and many use open-air lakes and settling ponds to dump waste from the city. No Arctic community in Canada has any incinerators, and some are based on the practice of environmental toxicities from outdoor smoking, the North Oceans report says.
“Most landfills are a disaster,” Fuller says.
“Unlike most of southern Canada, we have faced chronic, large and growing gaps in municipal infrastructure over the decades,” wrote Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the organization that represents Inuit in Canada, in the report’s progress. “Currently, we have no direct involvement in making decisions about recycling, reducing or diverting paper, cardboard, plastic, hazardous materials and electronic waste that fill our landfills, threatening our freshwater supply and locally collected food, and directly affecting our air quality.”
Outdoor landfills and waste incineration produce a myriad of harmful chemicals that can easily be dumped into the surrounding environment and animals or fish that live nearby, according to a June report. report The International Pollutant Elimination Network, a global network of environmental organizations. A July report ITK found that locally harvested wild foods such as fish, berries or wild meat provide half of a quarter of Inuit protein needs. Harvesting and hunting are also culturally important — 85 percent of Inuit 15-year-olds or older hunt or trap — and can offer a cheaper alternative to expensive imported food.
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