Coastal cleanup bags 50 tonnes of marine debris
A West Coast cleanup project has removed 50 tonnes of marine debris from the shores of B.C.’s Discovery Islands.
The amount of garbage collected by a small but determined team from 357 kilometres of shoreline on Quadra, Cortes, Read, Maurelle, and Marina islands from October to late December was staggering, said project co-ordinator Breanne Quesnel.
“We’re really proud we were able to help get that volume of material off the beaches,” said Quesnel, co-owner of Spirit of the West Adventures, the wilderness tourism company that secured the provincial funds to do the cleanup.
“But we’re really disheartened that it’s there in the first place.”
The cleanup was funded by the province’s $18-million Clean Coast, Clean Waters initiative and is one of nine similar projects.
Plastic waste from shellfish farms and other aquaculture operations, as well as commercial fishing ropes and nets, made up the bulk of the garbage collected, Quesnel said.
Other ubiquitous offenders were large blocks of Styrofoam and tires typically used to float docks or for mooring devices.
The Styrofoam, or polystyrene plastic, is particularly bad because as it degrades and crumbles, the small, lightweight bits are easily and widely dispersed by wind and waves, Quesnel said. They are also almost impossible to collect, she added.
The focus of the operation was to get the largest, most difficult to remove items from more remote beaches, which required specialized transport, she said.
The largest item by far was a massive 6,000-pound tire, most likely from a mining vehicle, that required two cranes to lift onto the dock and a specialized vehicle to take it away.
The goal was also to collect items that would degrade into microplastics and cause havoc in the marine food web, Quesnel said.
While beach cleanups are important, any real resolution involves choking off plastic use, Quesnel said, with stricter policy from all levels of government and more responsibility from industries that use plastics.
Plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems across the globe has grown sharply in recent years and is anticipated to more than double by 2030, according to a recent report by the UN Environmental Program.
Plastic accounts for 85 per cent of marine debris, and 23 million to 37 million tonnes of plastic will pollute the ocean per year by 2040 — equal to 50 kilograms of plastic per metre of coastline worldwide with dire implications for human health, biodiversity, and the climate and global economy, the report said.
Canada spearheaded an international effort to reduce plastics in marine ecosystems with the 2018 Oceans Plastic Charter. But the accord is voluntary and not enough to meet the severity of the problem, experts suggest.
Quesnel said that one of the most positive aspects of the Discovery Islands beach cleanup was that 50 per cent of the garbage collected was diverted from landfills through recycling or reuse. — Canada’s National Observer