James Middleton was a boat captain and Chloe Dubois worked in environment and resource management when they were inspired to co-found the Ocean Legacy Foundation, a non-profit that concentrates on collecting and recycling plastics found in the ocean.Supplied
The organizers: Chloé Dubois and James Middleton
The pitch: Founding The Ocean Legacy Foundation
Chloe Dubois and her partner James Middleton were watching a documentary several years ago about the plight of albatrosses on the Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, a collection of islands that have become a collection point for mountains of plastic waste.
The couple were living on a boat in British Columbia at the time and their lives revolved around sea life. He was a boat captain and she worked in environment and resource management.
“It was a small documentary just about how the birds out there were ingesting so much plastic and becoming entangled. And it really moved me,” Ms. Dubois recalled from Steveston, B.C., a Vancouver suburb.
That led them in to launch The Ocean Legacy Foundation in 2013, a non-profit group based in North Vancouver that organizes clean up events and recycling initiatives.
The organization’s primary program is called EPIC — Education, Policy, Infrastructure and Cleanup — and it works with dozens of communities to coordinate pollution removal expeditions. The OLF also ensures that the mounds of plastic collected don’t end up in landfills.
The group has a network of seven depots across B.C. which serve as education points and waste collection sites. Once the depots are full, the waste is sent to the foundation’s processing facility in Steveston where it is recycled into more than a dozen products such as buckets, gardening tools, planters and construction material. The OLF also has a lab that develops new uses for the recycled plastic.
The foundation recently launched a membership program to encourage marine businesses to participate in collection and recycling. The hope is to cut down on the amount of fishing gear — nets, buoys and rope — that’s discarded into the water.
“There’s about eight to 13 million tonnes of plastic pollution being released on an annual basis, and about 500,000 to a million tonnes of this is abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear,” said Ms. Dubois.
The OLF currently has around 15 staff but the workforce can swell to 200 depending on funding from donors.
Ms. Dubois said the growth of OLF has been heartwarming. “It’s been really inspiring to see so many people want to change how things are currently being done and to join forces to end plastic pollution.”