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Improve Air Quality – Protect Nature Challenge

Poor air quality affects us all, including wildlife. Poor air quality can directly affect wildlife health, and it can affect food quality and availability.

Here are five ways you can help improve air quality for us all:

  1. Carpool, ride your bike, take the bus or walk more often. Motor vehicles are a major contributor to smog, especially in large urban areas where traffic is heavy.
  2. Consider switching to things like an electric vehicle for shopping or a battery-powered lawnmower or leaf blower for yard work.
  3. In winter, ask yourself, “Do I really need to use my woodstove today?” Burning wood for home heating is a leading cause of smog in winter.
  4. Save energy. In Canada, a large portion of home heating is produced by fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil). Have an energy audit done on your home to help identify ways to make it more energy efficient. By using less energy for heating and by reducing your electricity consumption, you will help keep the air clean. Support renewable energy. Find out about government rebate programs.
  5. Plant trees to increase the urban forest canopy, provide shade and improve air quality.
Find out more about air quality and what you can do.
Small gas engines cause a lot of air pollution. One hour of lawn mower use equals driving 480km from Quebec city to Ottawa.
Small gas engines cause a lot of air pollution. One hour of snow blower use equals driving 550km from Toronto to Montreal or from Saskatoon to Edmonton.

Let’s do this together

Share these challenges with your friends and family and show us what you are doing by tagging us in your social media messages and by using the hashtag #ProtectNature.

We’re on Instagram @canenvironment, Facebook @EnvironmentandClimateChange and Twitter @environmentca.

Need inspiration?

Check out our list of challenges to help protect nature.

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