New Richmond facility recycles plastic debris found in ocean
A recycling plant that aims to turn 500,000 tonnes of ocean plastic waste into 500,000 tonnes of pellets every year opened on Wednesday in Steveston.
The Ocean Legacy Foundation, a non-profit organization, has been collecting the plastic debris since 2016, said co-founder Chloe Dubois in the middle of the cavernous sorting and processing centre on Chatham Street in Richmond.
“Now we finally have our permanent home,” she said.
The group's expeditions have so far collected more than 85,000 kilograms of waste from B.C.'s shoreline, according to its website.
The yard behind the warehouse is full of the foam, floats, rope, baskets, nets and plastic containers collected from B.C. shorelines and waters.
“Pretty much everything a person buys will end up in the ocean,” she said. “The ocean is the largest landfill in the world.”
She said an estimated eight to 13 million tonnes of plastic debris ends up in the world's seas every year. The waste has to be sorted by hand.
“It's fairly contaminated and it's fairly complex to work with resin types,” said Dubois.
The foundation also aims to educate consumers about plastic use, advocate policy to reduce the waste, develop infrastructure, and do cleanup and restoration.
The pellets created will be used to create new plastic materials, which reduces the need for new plastic, said B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman. The pellets can be used to make such things as furniture and clothing.
“We need to do more,” he said. “We need to keep this waste out of our oceans and out of landfill.”
The provincial government in December 2020 announced $9.5 million for the Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative Fund, a marine cleanup project intended to create jobs and support coastal communities as they recover from the pandemic shutdown.
Heyman said the project resulted in 425 tonnes of debris being removed from 306 kilometres of B.C. shoreline this year and 180 jobs were created. Another 125 tonnes of plastic waste was recovered in 2020.
Most of the debris collected is recyclable.