Pollution, management, and mitigation of idle and orphaned oil and gas wells in Alberta, Canada.

Alberta has extensive non-renewable energy resources which contribute to the Canadian economy. A downturn in oil and gas energy prices in 2014 contributed to increased idle and orphaned wells, posing potential environmental and human health risks, as well as an economic burden on the province of Alberta. Idle and orphaned wells contribute to local adverse environmental and human health effects from soil and groundwater contamination to greenhouse gas emissions. With increasing numbers of idle and orphaned wells, current monitoring measures, including regulation and cost to identify well leakage, are insufficient. Current policy measures to manage idle and orphaned well environmental liabilities were found to be inadequate to cover cleanup costs. With oil and gas prices showing no signs of rebound, these idle and orphaned well liabilities need to be addressed. This paper discusses potential environmental risks that idle and orphaned oil and gas wells pose, compares Alberta's current monitoring and policy initiatives to those in other provinces as well as the USA, and recommends future management strategies to mitigate the issue.

Reducing marine pollution from single-use plastics (SUPs): A review.

Single-use plastics, or SUPs (plastic bags, microbeads, cutlery, straws and polystyrene) are substantial sources of plastic marine pollution, yet preventable via legislative and non-legislative interventions. Various international legislative strategies have been reported to address plastic marine pollution from plastic bags and microbeads, but these have since been accompanied by recent increasing public awareness triggered by international agencies and organizations. The Sixth International Marine Debris Conference highlighted increasing intervention strategies to mitigate SUP pollution. This study presents new multi-jurisdictional legislative interventions to reduce SUPs since 2017 and incorporates emergence of new non-legislative interventions to mitigate other types of SUPs at individual and private-sector levels that complement or influence legislative interventions. Further, effectiveness of SUP bag interventions (e.g., bans vs. levies) to help reduce SUP marine pollution are presented and range between 33 and 96% reduction in bag use.