Clear Your Gear aims to recycle more fishing line in northwestern Ontario

A program which aims to collect old fishing line, so it doesn't end up on shorelines or wildlife, will expand its collection footprint in northwestern Ontario.

Clear Your Gear collects used line, boxes up the material, and sends it to Berkley, a fishing line manufacturer, which turns the monofilament plastic into other items.

The program, which was developed in Manitoba, after seeing a similar program in the United States, will now have collection sites set up near Sioux Lookout, Ont.

"That rock fish that you caught that you couldn't get your line, so you cut your line. And, over time, wave actions have loosened it, and it's found on the shoreline. What do you do when you find it?" said Judy Robertson, the president of Clear Your Gear.

"Putting it in the garbage only moves the problem to a different location," she said, noting that garbage in a landfill is often ripped open by wildlife, which still endangers them to the discarded line.

The program, Robertson said, is all run by volunteers. They build and install the receptacles, and also empty them when full of line. The material is shipped to the United States in boxes provided by Berkley. 

"Our hope is to educate people. It's a very simple thing to do. If you see it, pick it up, put it in one of the receptacles, it will get recycled."

"It's plastic. It takes 600 years to break down in the environment. They use it for nesting material. They might swallow the fish that's still attached. It's pretty much fatal in most cases, to wildlife." 

Robertson said the issue is global, and the group is quickly expanding across Canada, with collection bins in five provinces.

In northwestern Ontario, receptacles are in Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances and Vermilion Bay. Slate Falls Airways, based in Sioux Lookout, will place 20 receptacles at remote lodges it services.

"Imagine all the fishing camps, where people have fished for years and years and years. Eventually all that fishing line ends up on the shoreline. Some of those areas are pretty remote."

Robertson said people who are interested in volunteering to install or maintain the receptacles, can visit clearyourgear.ca