From Fishing Line to Carpet Yarn

Chris Rodinis
January 16th, 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/creating-sustainable-livelihoods-recycling

Remember the Gulf oil spill of 2010? For a time, there seemed to be no stopping it. A game of “what if” could have easily been played. What if we could not stop it? How long would it take for it to kill the ocean? A decade? More? Less?

Well how about the trash in our oceans? The plastic trash and all the trash that ends up in our oceans is a problem. If we do nothing, then eventually the oceans would probably die and take humans with them.

Which brings us to the topic of this blog post: ocean trash.

One element of the ocean trash scene is discarded fishing gear, more specifically fishing nets and fishing lines. Combine the weights of one year’s worth of discarded fishing nets across the globe and it would equal over several tones.

Sometimes the nets have a final resting place on the beach and sometimes the ocean floor or worse, they end up on an ocean floor loaded with beautiful, exotic and protected coral reefs.

UN research on discarded fishing items has shown there is a possibility that up to 10% of the trash in our oceans is fishing nets, fishing line and fishing gear.

Now taking advantage of this fact would be a really nice trick. And that is exactly what happened with a carpet company. The carpet company knew that the nylon from discarded fishing nets could be recycled into to carpet.

Turning old nets into new carpet is the combined efforts of Interface, a carpet maker, Net-works, an innovational company, and the Zoological Society of London, a non-profit organization that promotes conversation.

This trio has recently finished a project near fishing towns of the Philippines.

Around these towns are coral reefs which are very delicate and great places to fish commercially. And since commercial fishing is done there, commercial fishing nets are often left behind.

Because of this conservation program the fisherman are paid to recycle the nets instead of leaving them behind. Net-Works created the program and Interface uses a recycler to process them into yarn for carpet made of recycled nylon.

Now the fisherman have another way to make money and a solid opportunity to maintain their fishing lanes for a sustainable future.

This way, many synergies have been created. Fisherman get paid for working to keep the fishing sustainable. Interface recyclers get paid for processing. And the Zoo society can reach its conservation goals; all the while, the fish, the ocean, the fisherman, the town and the world all win.

Here is the how this sounds from a  corporate branding perspective: “We were looking for a way to have our product not just speak environmentally, but also speak socially from a sustainability perspective.”

“It’s just the ingredient and has this strong social element, so we expect it to be very easy to commercialise.”

“What makes this compelling besides the basic economics is the huge social and environmental effect it has on the region and villagers.”

“This is a very compelling argument when you come across any internal resistance to the business model,” says Mr. Stansfield of Interface, “and this impact helps to keep the project moving forward internally.”

For information about electronics recycling contact:
www.EwasteWiz.com