What started as one teenager’s idea is now a free recycling program taking boat shrink wrap off driveways and out of landfills on the South Shore.

Declan Bergan, a rising high school senior from Cohasset, launched the program after researching boat shrink wrap recycling as an intern at the Massachusetts State House.

Bergan has spent the past five summers with the Cohasset Center for Student Coastal Research. This summer, he is researching ways to protect dune grass, which is an important habitat and helps prevent erosion.

“I’ve grown up here my whole life, it’s beautiful, want to keep it that way,” he said of his hometown.

After a proposal for a statewide recycling program failed, Bergan created his own pilot program based on an effort on Cape Cod.

“Down in the Cape, there is a program through Woods Hole that actually does something very similar to the idea,” he said. “I based my pilot program off them.”

This spring, Bergan raised funds and partnered with Troupe Waste and Republic Services. He now offers free recycling and collects the shrink wrap himself from marinas and boat owners in Cohasset, Scituate, Weymouth, Hingham and Hull.

“Before I knew it, there was a dumpster in my driveway,” said Bergan’s mother, Maeve Mullally. “He’s been driving all around, picking up people’s boat wrap, and it seemed like kind of a wild idea, (but) it’s just been so successful and really well received.”

According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant, a similar Cape Cod recycling program grew from collecting 1 ton of shrink wrap in 2018 to more than 60 tons last year.

Bergan said he hopes his program keeps expanding.

“It’s just realizing that you have an opportunity to make some change,” he said. “This started as such a small-scale thing for me, but I just had an idea, and I just wanted to act upon that … knowing that I can make a conscious effort to make this small change; that will hopefully inspire others to do the same.”

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