CLEVELAND — Boating is big in some parts of Ohio, but it can come with a big environmental concern. 

What You Need To Know

  • One-time use shrink-wrap that protects boats comes with big environmental concerns

  • Only about 17% of 350 marinas volunteer to prepare the shrink wrap for recycling

  • The shrink-wrap is recycled at an Ohio business and turned into guardrail blocks

Some boaters use a type of one-time use shrink-wrap that protects boats while stored in the off-season.

The Ohio Clean Marina program is helping to keep the material out of landfills and turn it into something useful. 

“The last four years have been made really simple. There’s no excuse for any yard not to do it,” said Rob Morley, owner of Riverfront Yacht, which sells and houses boats on the Cuyahoga River. 

There are nearly two tons of the plastic stored behind Morley’s boat yard. He volunteers in a program that recycles boat shrink-wrap.

The main obstacle to the shrink wrap getting recycled is it being mixed in with the nylon strapping used to hold it onto boats, according to Sarah Orlando, program manager for Ohio Clean Marina.

But Orlando said it’s an easy fix.

She said she’s seen commercial-scale letter openers that make it easy to remove the band prior to the cover being removed from boats.

The goal is to divert the hundreds of thousands of pounds of boat shrink-wrap that Orlando calls “the best of example of single-use plastic.”

Of the 350 marinas in Ohio, only 30 to 60 participate in the program.  

Once the shrink-wrap is properly removed, the process comes full circle in Ohio. It gets shipped to an Ohio business that turns it into guardrail blocks.

More information on the Ohio Clean Marina program can be found here.