Milkweed touted as oil-spill super-sucker — with butterfly benefits
December 2, 2014
A Quebec company is taking a unique approach to cleaning up oil spills by producing the world's only industrial crop of milkweed, which will be used as new kind of absorbent.
François Simard, creator of Protec-Style, has a contract with Parks Canada to supply national parks with oil-spill kits. The kits come with various sizes of absorbent tubes filled with milkweed fibre.
Simard says milkweed has a unique ability to repel water, which makes it perfect for oil spills on land or water.
"You can leave an absorbent [milkweed] sock in water and it will only absorb the oil. It's very unique in nature to have fibres like that," said Simard in an interview at his factory in Granby, Que.
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