Waste collected from the city's waterfront by the University of Toronto's Trash Team has been turned into a floating art installation intended to remind people about the pervasiveness of pollution.
The sculpture, called "Tangle," is made of refuse ranging from polypropylene bags to microplastic particles and discarded toys - all wrapped in willow branches and invasive plants found in Lake Ontario. It can be viewed in the Harbourfront neighbourhood's Peter Street Basin until September.
Created by Trash Team artist-in-residence Emily Chudnovsky, the work is designed to raise awareness of the waste we routinely see in our waterways.
"We produce so much waste as a global society," Chudnovsky told CTV News. "How can we use less material and how can we learn from the natural world, which has many different systems for filtering waste, repurposing waste and not producing waste?"
The U of T Trash Team is made up of undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, local volunteers and staff working in collaboration with Chelsea Rochman, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of ecology and evolutionary biology.
