(Photos courtesy Waste Management NW)
From the “what you’ll see at sea” file: Waste Management Northwest says the 300-foot barge you see above is on its way to its South Park dock after a trip to Alaska…
… where helicopters were used to pick up more than 3,000 super sacks filled with hundreds of tons of marine debris, each weighing approximately 400 pounds.
A significant amount of the collected debris was generated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and was subsequently deposited by winds and currents along the remote coastlines of Alaska and Canada. … The barge will arrive and unload the super sacks of marine debris on Waste Management’s Seattle dock. In a few weeks, local environmental volunteer groups will sort the material for recycling at an event coordinated by Parley for the Oceans, a national non-profit focused on addressing threats to the world’s oceans. Material Innovation company Bionic Yarn will then transform the sorted marine debris plastic into high-performance textiles and polymers. All remaining debris will travel via train to the Columbia Ridge landfill.
WM isn’t sure yet exactly when the barge will enter the Duwamish River; it’s hosting a media briefing at 11 am this Friday (August 7th) and the barge is expected to be docked by then.
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