Our Work

A small sampling of some current research projects that the Innovative Waste Management Research Team is involved in are listed below. Please feel free to reach out through the Contact Information for further information.

Quantifying the carbon footprints and greenhouse gas emissions from source separate organics facilities

A research collaboration between McGill University, Queens University, and Dalhousie University is focusing on the carbon and nutrient footprints of managing municipal organics in landfills, composting facilities, and biogas digesters across Canada. This project is funded through Environment and Climate Change Canada's Climate Action and Awareness Fund along with contributions from multiple municipal, provincial, federal, and non-governmental partners.

Decarbonizing Canada's food value chain to mitigate climate change

A national project focusing on estimating the impacts of food loss and waste from the Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional (IC&I) sectors in Canada. The project is funded through a NSERC Alliance Missions Grant on Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Research and involves collaborations with McGill University, the University of Guelph, and many partners from industry, government, and non-governmental organizations who are keenly interested in helping to slow down the global food waste epidemic.

Developing a national digital soil and soil spectroscopy data platform

The project is being funded through the NSERC-SSHRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative (SARI), a joint initiative between the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), in collaboration with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). This project will focus on bringing together the resources and expertise of soil scientists across Canada to aggregate and make openly available soil datasets that can be used for environmental monitoring and planning, establishment of carbon storage opportunities, and ensuring Canada's soil resources are maintained in a sustainable state for future generations.

Assessing the long-term impacts of municipal biosolids use in agricultural soils

This research is based on my long-standing work focusing on the influence of soil amendments, particularly municipal biosolids, on soil chemistry and ecology. A large aspect of this research is to evaluate the role of stress and disturbance on the soil systems through the use of organic amendments, especially as it relates to intensity of applications (rates) and frequency of applications.

Preservation of Blue Whale and North Atlantic right whale skeletons through composting and non-aggressive chemical approaches

In 2017, we undertook a collaboration between Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dalhousie University, and the Marine Animal Rescue Society to investigate the use of composting and other non-aggressive chemical techniques to decompose large mammal mortalities and degrease great whale skeletons for future preservation. Through this work we have engaged high school students, members of the community, researchers and graduate students to help in creating a conservation story to relate the impact humans can have on life in the oceans. Our work also involved creating a 3D archive of each bone and generating a range of media to help tell the stories. Some of this work has been featured through Ingenium Canada (click the image above) as a four part series.