Canoe Journey Recycles

The 2010 Tribal Canoe Journey came ashore in Port Townsend on July 14. WSU Jefferson County Beach Watchers were among the crowd at Fort Worden ready to greet them. We were honored to participate again this year by coordinating a recycling station at the beach landing.

Luther and Craig (pictured below) along with Patrica and Beth were on site early to set up the stations. Luther was zooming around rounding up garbage cans from anywhere he could find them. Good thing because the canoes came in much earlier than expected. Due to the great weather and strong pulling, the canoes began arriving around 11am. But we were ready!

We were really pleased that this year the local organizers worked to set up a water station with pitchers and paper cups and did not provide bottled water. Hooray! We have been strong advocates for reducing the waste stream from bottled water over the past year and we were pleased to see a significant drop in the number of plastic bottles we recycled. A huge thank you to Carla, Gary and Doug from Beach Watchers everywhere!

The canoes were all in by about 2pm and we carried all the garbage up to the road. We loaded up the "Recycle Mobile" and headed up to the Fort's recycling center. The "Recycle Mobile" was filled to the brim! Andi (driving) and Carol (you can barely see her!) along with a couple other brave Beach Watchers squeezed in for the ride. Once at the Fort the sorting was.... pretty interesting and actually not that bad.

We learned that the pullers are not fond of blue and orange colored drinks (we won't mention the brand:-) ) because we found a lot of them thrown in the recycle bin that were nearly full. Jan, Andi and Carol demonstrate their sorting techniques

Overall, in spite of having many more people this year the plastic bottles were reduced by at least one large garbage bag.

Many thanks to all the Beach Watchers who are not pictured or mentioned above but helped out with the recycling and in other capacities as well including Terry, Meredith, Nick, Mary Jo, and Burt. And a huge congratulations for the rest of the volunteers who worked so hard up in the camp ground and in the kitchen. What a marvelous and amazing community effort. And such an honor that the Journey and the pullers choose to stop in Port Townsend.