As one of our first projects for Rivers are Life, we brought together partners from six different organizations to help our River Hero, Chris Pallister and his organization, Gulf of Alaska Keeper (GoAK). For years they have been battling ocean trash as it washes up on Alaska's coastline and into their rivers. The project begins in the remote reaches of the Gulf of Alaska, where litter accumulates through ocean currents, fishing routes, and tourism. After GoAK and local volunteers collect the garbage, they are faced with a new problem - what to do with it?

To help raise awareness for this issue, we traveled to Alaska to show the unique collaboration between GoAK, FedEx, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, Dow, Pyxera Global, and the Center for Regenerative Design and Collaboration (CRDC). This group has teamed up to take the harmful trash left in Alaska's hard-to-reach shores and recycle it into an innovative, durable construction material dubbed RESIN8.

As trash levels on Alaska's gulf coast continue to rise, waste management, and the costs associated with it, have become a focal point to continue supporting cleanup efforts. 

"The difficulty with marine debris cleanup in Alaska is 33,000 miles of coastline," explains Lori Aldrich, Hazardous Waste Project Manager with the State of Alaska. "Half of Alaska you cannot reach by road - you've got to take a plane, you've got to take a boat, you've got to take a combination of different things."

The goal of this project was to find a way for Alaska to process this ocean trash into concrete. To accomplish this experiment we followed the litter collected by GoAK along its journey via FedEx shipment to a CRDC facility in Pennsylvania - where new technology is recycling historically hard-to-break-down ocean plastics into a better, durable product for bricks, concrete, and other important structural building substances. Testing the theory that a group of scientists, innovators, and problem solvers can come together to test and scale solutions for waste and recycling.

Keepers of the North explores the challenges of cleaning up the Gulf of Alaska while exploring a new, scalable approach to making plastic waste useful.