Getting Creative with Recycling: Fishing Nets
As summer begins in Alaska, fishing communities prepare for a newly funded and innovative recycling program of a common material in Alaska: fishing nets.
The net recycling program is funded through the Fishing For Energy, a partnership of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Covanta Energy Corporation and Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc. The program goal is to provide “a cost-free solution to fishermen to dispose of old, derelict (gear that is lost in the marine environment) or unusable fishing gear and to reduce the amount of derelict fishing gear in and around coastal waterways.”
Though no longer usable for fishing, these nets can be recycled into new materials or created into electricity in a waste-to-energy process. Photo: Alaska-in-pictures.com
The Fishing For Energy program was launched in 2008 in New England fishing ports and has collected more than 150 tons of gear for recycling to date, including nets, rope, metal crab pots and rigging gear.
According to the Copper River Watershed Project, which will be overseeing a fishing web recycling project in Alaska, about 800,000 to one million pounds of fishing web is used in nets each year. Most old web is currently dumped in community landfills, but they will soon be recycled into plastic pellets for use in manufacturing plastic products and parts.
Although the formal recycling program may be in its beginning stages, Alaskans have found creative ways of recycling and reusing old fishing nets for years. The Watershed Project in Cordova uses old fishing nets to surface a scenic 1,100 foot trail, rather than using costly materials. They also use the nets to make ski ramps in the winter.
In a much warmer climate to the southeast, Hawaiian fishing net recycling programs are underway as well. The Honolulu Derelict Net Recycling Program recycles old fishing nets into HPower Fuel at a waste-to-electricity plant. The plant uses the energy from the recycled nets to supply power to a few hundred of the 40,000 homes they service. The program has recovered about 660 tons of nets since 2006.
- Copper River Watershed Project. http://www.copperriver.org/.
- National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. http://www.nfwf.org/.
- Tina Casey. CleanTechnica.com(05/28/2009). Hawaiian Garbage-to-Energy Plant Recycles Derelict Fishing Nets for Electricity http://cleantechnica.com/2009/05/28/hawaiian-garbage-to-energy-plant-recycles-derelict-fishing-nets-for-electricity/#more-2592.
As of June 17th 2011 we have upgraded our comment system to use Facebook comments. The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.
patricia lynn mckenna
posted on June 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I Patricia want to help the earth and want to know how to get on board can you help me out to become a part of the best things in the world. I love what you are doing! The earth is dieing and I want to help rebuild is natural habitat
Thanks **Patricia McKenna**
Please call me if you have a moment [EDITED]
Ladislao
posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
Hello
I have a project in the company where I am working for, that foresees to recycle old and used fishing nets to produce goods. Very important is that the nets are made of Nylon6 as different materials cannot be processed in our recycle system
If you think that it could something interesting for your project, please contact me
Thanks
Ladislao
Lois
posted on July 11th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I’m looking for used netting for covering a chicken coop. Type of netting not important.
About 60′ by 70′ will do, or several smaller pieces to combine.
How feasible is this to buy and have shipped? Where do I find it?
Lois Olund
Philomath, Oregon 97370
Krishantha Silva
posted on December 1st, 2009 at 10:38 am
My name is Krishantha Silva form Sri Lanka ( in the Indian Sub-continent ).
We have a problem in Sri Lanka with used / damaged Nylon fishing nets. Haphazardly discarded fishing nets is contaminating the environment and also endangering the wild life, especially birds.
Here is Sri Lanka, we do not have a system of collecting and disposing / re-cycling old / damaged fishing nets. A group of us set up a organization to deal with this problem in our country but ran out of funds since there is no funding available.
It cost us around US $ 100.00 to collect and process one metric ton ( 1000 kg ) of Nylon fishing nets. This could even be exported from Sri Lanka to anywhere in the world.
Can anyone please help us to deal with this problem directly or putting us in touch with organizations that can help us. We need funds to organize and collect the nets and then to dispose / recycle them.
Any help given to us is much appreciated.
Thank you
Regards
Krishantha Silva