![Picture](/uploads/1/4/2/9/142922333/published/img-20221023-093344.jpg?1669150537)
Outreach activity at the Aquarium of Quebec
Every October since 2021, our lab members participate in outreach activities at the Aquarium of Quebec. We talk about microbial life in aquifers, permafrost thawing, and cyanobacterial blooms to hundreds of children and adults.
Every October since 2021, our lab members participate in outreach activities at the Aquarium of Quebec. We talk about microbial life in aquifers, permafrost thawing, and cyanobacterial blooms to hundreds of children and adults.
Recycling lab gloves project
Understanding and preserving a sustainable environment is at the heart of our mission as environmental researchers. Yet the laboratory tasks essential to its success consume an often unavoidable yet staggering number of plastics, which are sometimes reusable or recyclable. This is the case of nitrile, vinyl, and latex gloves: widely used items, but with a dark side... Lab gloves last no more than a few hours in the lab, but they will take a hundred years to slowly degrade in a landfill or end up in the incinerator. But we could give them a second life! It is in this context that Professor Jérôme Comte’s team won a grant jointly financed by the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur (MES) and the Secrétariat à la jeunesse. The project began with the establishment of collection boxes for nitrile, vinyl, and latex gloves in all the laboratories of the INRS centre ETE. The collection boxes are manufactured by Cartonek, a local company whose mission is to integrate into the labour market people living with functional limitations, through the development of adapted activities. The collected gloves are recycled by the local company Go Zero and repurposed to manufacture new products such as gym equipment, playgrounds, agricultural mats, and much more.
Media coverage: - Recycling plastic gloves, Breakaway with Alison Brunette – July 15 2022, CBC, https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-79-breakaway/clip/15925420-recycling-plastic-gloves - Initiatives vertes : Les gants jetables récupérés à l’INRS, Première heure – 11 juillet 2022, Radio-Canada, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/premiere-heure/episodes/639959/rattrapage-du-lundi-11-juillet-2022 |
Engagement activities in the NorthOur research is not just about sampling in the North but to collaborate, inform and learn from communities who live on this land. We have initiated several engagement activities in northern communities to report on our activities on their land. These events include activities at schools, public conferences and exhibits, non-technical reports, talks on the radio. As a whole, these initiatives represent opportunities to exchange with people, to hear about their concerns and to define what future research should be focusing on to address them.
|