More than 2,400 scrap tires were removed from a remote islet off the Sunshine Coast last month, a group of environmental organizations has reported.
A 33-person team from the Ocean Legacy Foundation and Let’s Talk Trash removed the offending tires between Oct. 29 and 30 from the small island off the east coast of Nelson Island. No one knows the “mystery” of how they got there, according to plastic pollution specialist Abby McLennan.
“We first caught wind of ‘Tire Island’ while out scouting for shoreline cleaning projects in early June of this year,” the Let’s Talk Trash team co-founder told Global News.
“We were just cruising along the coastline and sort of saw from afar this little island … it was just covered in black sort of stuff. As we got closer, the black stuff turned into mountains of tires.”
Because of the way the tires were placed, it appeared as though they had all come from a “singular dump” or a few trips made by the same people, McLennan added. The island falls on Crown land, and its use of a dump site appears to date back to the 1990s, she said.
“You can actually see this entire island from the ferry that goes from Earl’s Cove to Saltery Bay … it’s the problem with many sites that are similar in nature to this that it’s outside of everyone’s jurisdiction to clean it up.”
All of the abandoned tires were removed by hand due to the complexities of the island terrain, including a lack of beach or landing area.
According to a Tuesday news release, the cleanup was part of the Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative, which supports marine shoreline cleanup and derelict vessel removal in B.C.’s coastal communities. The project is funded by the B.C. Ministry of Environment.
The removal was also conducted in partnership with Tire Stewardship BC and Liberty Tire.
The environmental organizations said the tires were loaded up onto a barge and taken to Powell River, where they were loaded by hand again into eight, 30-yard bins and a trailer. From there, the tires were taken to Liberty Tire’s recycling facility in Delta, B.C.
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