Dock Removal on Vargas Island: Spelling Out Why We Need a Ban on EPS & XPS in Aquatic Infrastructure

In May, Surfrider Canada and Surfrider Pacific Rim headed out to Keltsmaht Beach on Vargas Island, Ahousaht First Nation territory. A dock with polystyrene floats had washed ashore, with the foam floats leaking innumerable white beads all over the beach. Between seven of us, we were able to remove the foam floats, clean up the polystyrene bomb, as well as collect marine debris from the rest of the beach. Together, we removed 400 lbs of debris, comprised of the following:

1 fish tote lid
1 encapsulated foam float from the washed up dock (roughly 1/3 of a supersac)
1/3 super sac of trash (clothing, soft plastic)
1 plastic buoy
30 plastic bottles
100 pieces of hard plastic
150 ft of rope
1/2 super sac of foam

While this day was largely a success, there are countless beaches in BC and from coast to coast that are inundated with toxic expanded and extruded polystyrene foam (EPS & XPS). By volume, this material roughly comprises 40-80% of what cleanups groups remove from coastlines in BC.As you can see in this video, this foam is pretty much impossible to fully remove from the environment once it washes up.

There are non-foam alternatives for infrastructure flotation that are more stable, safe, and do not lead to a consistent leakage of toxins into the environment. We have the answers - so why wait?

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Join events across the Surfrider network and sign postcards to your Member of Parliament and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, see an example of this sweet postcards below that we’ve made in partnership with Fishing for Plastic!

Send a letter to your Member of Parliament and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and urge them to support Motion-80, which is demanding the following actions from the Government of Canada:

(i) take immediate measures to ban the use of EPS and XPS in construction of floating structures in the aquatic environment, encased or not, under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999,

(ii) establish an action plan to phase out all legacy EPS and XPS floating structures across all aquatic environments in Canada.