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.