Recycled Fishing Line Would Stretch Across America
Ready for a road trip? If you packed your bags - and tackle box - and drove from Washington, D.C. to San Diego, California, you’d travel nearly 2,700 miles. That’s the amount of fishing line that was recycled through the BoatU.S. Foundation’s Reel In and Recycle Program last year, which gives anglers an easy way to recycle fishing line at more than 1,000 locations across the country.
This effort happens as a result of many individuals and organizations that install and maintain the line-recycling bins. The bins are installed on piers, docks, and buildings at water’s edge, and maintained by fishing clubs, Scouting groups marinas, and other local volunteers. In The last two years the BoatU.S. Foundation has built and distributed nearly 1,200 fishing-line recycling bins to local groups around the country. These three-foot-tall PVC storage tubes keep discarded fishing line out of our waterways and help protect fish, birds, and other wildlife from entanglement. The 2,700 miles of line collected by these volunteers were sent to Berkley Conservation Institute, a division of Pure Fishing (www.purefishing.com), for recycling, where it was melted down and used to make other products.
Adding to this total, boating sailing, and fishing product retailer West Marine (www.westmarine.com) recycled line collected at their stores. West Marine is a vital partner in this effort. When respooling line for customers, there’s a great opportunity to collect large volumes of line for recycling. The company tracks their own stores’ line collection through online tools and provides incentives to the volunteer groups to collect and recycle their old line. Each time one of the BoatU.S. Foundation’s 1,200 recycling bin sites reports a line shipment to Berkley, the group is entered to win a $100 West marine gift card in a monthly drawing.
The BoatU.S. Foundation is building an additional 1,200 recycling bins this spring and is looking for new Reel In and recycle bin locations. If you’d like to receive a new bin, visit www.BoatUS.com/Foundation/monofilament to sign up on a waitlist. The Foundation also has a short video at this website that shows how to build your own line recycling bin.
