A handful of workers are grabbing som eof the tired spread out across the top of an island

The story behind the Tire Islet clean-up

A waste education program from Powell River recently cleaned up an islet that was partially buried under tires. Cortes Currents re-published the story from qathet Living and that probably would have ended the matter, except some of you had questions. The biggest one was something between shock and disbelief that such a beautiful Islet had actually been turned into a tire dump. So Cortes Currents asked Abby McLennan of Let’s Talk Trash for an interview. 

Abby McLennan – courtesy Lets Talk Trash

Related: Read Abby McLennan’s report of this clean-up

Abby McLennan: “We first came across Tire Island when we were doing some scouting for shoreline cleanup projects this summer, so in early June. 

We are in partnership with the Ocean Legacy Foundation through the province’s Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative. It was our second summer under this initiative. We saw this little island.” 

“From afar, it looked like a bunch of black stuff on top of it, like little black mountains. As we got closer, we saw that it was actually tires.  It was overwhelming the amount of tires we could just see from the water.” 

“This little islet  is on the east coast of Nelson Island, three quarters of the way down the island. You could see this islet when you’re on the BC Ferry route heading from Saltery Bay to Earls Cove. I took that route in October and could see it with my bare eyes from the ferry. It’s hard to tell what exactly is on the island, but if you had binoculars it would show up  as tires.” 

“We didn’t select it as a project in our initial round of cleanups just because it looked pretty complicated. There was no great landing spot and the amount of tires looked pretty overwhelming.”

Cortes Currents/Cortes Radio’s FM broadcast area is as far south as Powell River, and includes several of the places McLennan mentions – adapted from Google maps by Roy L Hales

Cortes Currents: Tell me a little bit  about your other beach cleanups this year. Where did you go and what did you do? 

Abby McLennan: “We pulled about 22 tons of material out of this derelict aquaculture site just off of Nelson Island, that had turned into  a dump site.” 

“We cleaned up Harwood Island (or Ahgykson Island), which is a Tla’amin Nation island.  It just has a great south facing  aspect and continues to collect materials.  I think the sixth time we’ve been there. We definitely collected less than we had in past years, but there was still a couple tons of material to get off of there.”

“We pulled close to 30 tons of material out of Okeover, in Malaspina Inlet. It’s like the hot oyster farming inlet.” 

“We did a quick cleanup on Savory Island.”

“The residents of Hernando Island did a cleanup throughout the summer and  had material all staged for us at their big community dock. Then we picked up two harder projects for them, beach boats on remote shorelines.” 

“We did a little bit up into Desolation Sound, Wellington Channel. There was an old squatters camp that had accumulated a lot of material.” 

An intimidating pile of old tires – Photo courtesy Let’s Talk Trash

“Later in the season, after all the established projects were complete,  there was some underspent money in our budget, so I was like,  ‘I’m now willing to take on this larger tire island project.’”

It was right beside an oyster farm.  

Abby McLennan: “So we reached out to DFO. The lease line came right up to the island, but did not include the island. I contacted the oyster farmer,  just to make sure it’s not their material and they were just relieved that we would be potentially cleaning this up.” 

“The reports we have are that these tires showed up in the 1990s. Since the story got published, there were some social media posts – I think on Ocean Legacies channel. Someone responded, ‘I used to transport 40 yard bins full of  tires up to Egmont for use in an oyster farm, I bet you these are those tires.’” 

“That is the best report I’d gotten.”  

“The oyster farmers, who had been there for a few years, had no idea. They had heard some other stories such as a wooden barge that was hired by Transport Canada was transporting tires and the barge started to sink right outside this lease area. The tires were moved up onto this little island.”

Cortes Currents: How many tires were there?

Abby McLennan: “2,409 tires.”

Filling the bins – Photo courtesy Lets Talk Trash

“DFO and The Forest Lands Natural Resource officer were all aware of this island. It’s been reported a lot, with reports going back to the mid 1990s.  It just continued to be outside of everyone’s jurisdiction to clean up.”  

“That’s why this Clean Coast, Clean Waters funding is so great. You can tackle these larger scale projects that require more expensive resources like a barge and 30 plus people.” 

“We used a staging point 25 km south of Powell River.  There’s this little dock industrial site, Hummingbird Cove. That’s where we got the bins and unloaded the tires. From that site, it was a 35-40 minute boat ride to Tire Island.” 

“I asked the current oyster farmer to land on the island and give us a better estimate of how many tires were there. He said around 2000.” 

“We were brainstorming about how to best go about this, and had only allocated two days. That was how much we had in funding for boats and  also wages for people. We had access to one of the barges. We could rig up some tires, and get the crane to move them, but by the time we got people out of the way, undid the tying, and stack the tires, we thought it would be better to get as many people as possible and just go totally by human chain and muscle power.” 

The tire pile – Photo courtesy Lets Talk Trash

“I was pleasantly surprised to be able to get 30 workers and  a couple boat operators. 33 people, in total, came out during the very last weekend of October, right when the weather turned. It was cold, a little bit drizzly and I was expecting to not be able to get all the tires. I was like, ‘We’ll just get as many as we can. They’ll know how many’s left and that’s better than nothing.’ But we were able to get every last single tire and not work a super full day.  We were done by around 3:30-4:00 o’clock each of those days.”

“Hummingbird Cove has a nice big beach. Our big barge could come in for unloading. It had lots of space for bins and we transported all the tires and bins to our waste transfer site. From there they went to the Tire Stewardship Recycling Program.”

A circle of crumb rubber used in a waterpark – Photo by Glogger via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Cortes Currents: What happens to all the rubber now?

They make it into crumb rubber. That’s that new playground rubber that you see on playgrounds, school fields, track and field ovals. 

I will say  there’s a lot of studies now on the toxicity of the rubber from tires and how when cars are going on roadways there’s little microplastic bits of this tire rubber that goes on the roadways ends up going into storm drains and into the ocean.

Also when you have playgrounds and such as are in coastal communities, they are inherently close to the ocean. You’re getting these microplastic bits of rubber leaking out of the playgrounds and again, finding themselves in waterways. So use of this crumb rubber, I think  is questionable.

Cortes Currents: Is there anything you want to add? 

I think it’s really worthwhile if people see sites that look derelict ,or  they need to be cleaned up, is to report them.  There’s different channels. There’s a DFO, line you can call to report back. Also just reporting to the Ocean Legacy Foundation because they are constantly are getting funding for cleanups.  It’s great if we can have this database of sites that need to be cleaned so when we do get funding, we don’t have to spend a lot of time scouting.

Links of Interest: 

Top image credit: Cleaning up the mess at tire island – Photo courtesy Abby McLennan

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