By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

One of the things that has always irked Torontoist about winter is how our boots get encrusted with a strange cocktail of slush, oil, dirt and salt, kinda like a 7-11 slurpee meets construction site.
Now we have another reason to hate the stuff. It’s toxic and it’s yet another chemical that gets thrown into that lovely soup bowl south of us called Lake Ontario. The City of Toronto uses 150,000 tonnes of the stuff yearly to keep our highways and sidewalks safe and relatively snow free. Sadly most of this stuff eventually ends up in the lake, making life even more unpleasant for fishes and other marine life.
What’s the city doing about it? Not enough. The city’s initiatives to waste less salt are a good step. Unfortunately large scale solutions like switching to salt alternatives are problematic. Alternatives to salt like sand and urea are not as effective in some cases more expensive, some are just as toxic.
We can’t ask the city to stop using road salt, the effects would make the city’s sidewalks and streets into a skating rink complete with crosswalks and lampposts. In the past the city has run a series of catchy and downright funny ads reminding us that a lot of the waste we throw down the drain eventually ends up polluting the lake. Torontoist asks that the city redouble its efforts to reduce road salt use.
To be even bolder, Torontoist also proposes that the federal government fund a project of real concern to a northern, winter-blasted country such as ours, to search for an effective, cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to road salt. Think of it as an Apollo program for those of us forced to live with temperatures well below freezing for most of the year.
Photo: Now Magazine