Nova Chemicals is helping clean up the Great Lakes – with a some help from some new technology.

It has donated $200,000, to the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup. The group is using a first of a kind technology called the Seabin and Litta Trap technology to find and remove plastics and litter at marinas across Ontario.

Nova’s donation will help fund the project at the Sarnia Bay Marnia and Bridgeview Marina.

Rob Thompson Nova Chemicals’ vice-president of manufacturing, Ontario operations and members of the Great Lakes Plastic Clean up unveiled the project Wednesday in Sarnia.

The Great Lakes suffer from high levels of plastic pollution – in some locations, concentrations of plastic in the lakes are greater even than those recorded in ocean garbage patches.

Shoreline cleanups show that plastic accounts for around 80 percent of the litter found on Great Lakes shorelines.

It is estimated that approximately 10,000 tonnes of plastic enters the lakes and their surrounding waterways each year from Canada and the United States.

Nova, which manufactures the building blocks of plastics, recognizes the materials are vital but they don’t belong in waterways. They hope the Seabins and the Litta Trap will be part of the solution to the recycling and reuse of plastics.