Jana Wright, Perry Butler and Linda Churchill prepare nets for shipment April 8. Over 3,300 pounds of old gill nets were collected from local fishermen by the local IGAP office, which will then be sent to Slovenia via Petersburg for recycling.
A collection drive begun last August by Wrangell's Indian Environmental General Assistance Program (IGAP) has brought in quite a haul: about 3,300 pounds of discarded gill netting, brought in by area fishermen for recycling.
A survey conducted last year by Wrangell Cooperative Association (WCA) found that illegal dumping was a top environmental issue among residents. Among the items being abandoned around the island's lots and roadsides, old gill nets were a particularly knotty issue.
City sanitation facilities are not suited to handle netting along with other garbage, as the nets tend to become tangled up with the machinery of garbage trucks and the compactor. And left in the woods, netting poses a hazard to deer and other wildlife.
A collection site was started at the city landfill, using salt storage bags provided by Trident Seafoods to make collection and storage easier.
"There was huge cooperation between a lot of entities," Wrangell IGAP environmental technician Chris Hatton explained. Among these were the Harbor Department and Public Works transfer facility personnel, Trident, WCA, Alaska Marine Lines and the Petersburg Indian Association (PIA). And, of course, the fishermen providing the nets.
"We appreciate them dropping them off," Hatton commented.
Once collected, the nets were stripped by volunteers and bundled into a container for shipment. For processing purposes, lead and cork lines need to be removed beforehand.
"Most nets needed something clipped off of them," said Hatton.
The container was then shipped north to Petersburg, where PIA has already arranged with German-based engineering firm Aquafil to remove the nets free of charge. The company has developed a process to recycle them by making use of the Nylon 6 polymer that the nets are made from.
The nets join other nylon components such as carpet material, rigid textiles and pre-consumer waste, which will all be processed at an Aquafil plant in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
In the future, nets will be collected inside the fence line next to The Marine Service Center's cold-storage facility across from Rayme's. Hatton explained that the location will be more convenient for those discarding the nets and will make it easier for the office to manage. Informational signage will be posted there in the near future.
"It's a much better place. It's not 'out of sight, out of mind,'" she said.
Sponsored locally by WCA, the IGAP office receives its funding through the Environmental Protection Agency. Wrangell's program is just beginning the third quarter of its fourth and final year of the grant cycle, which ends Sept. 30.
"We've applied for the next two years," Hatton said. The program's goal is to assist tribes in developing their own sustainable environmental programs, while also providing technical assistance to address environmental issues.
WCA-IGAP will be putting out an updated list of businesses and locations around Wrangell that will take a variety of other recyclable items, like aluminum, batteries, florescent bulbs, ink cartridges, electronic waste, oil and other materials. The list will be posted around town, and also available at its Lynch Street office.
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