Waste Not, Want Not

The costs and benefits of end of life fishing gear

By Kirsten Milliken

The sea is a hostile place and can take its toll on fishing gear. When fishing gear reaches the end of its useable lifespan, it needs to be replaced so that fishermen can continue catching effectively. Most end-of-life fishing gear is disposed of in landfill, but does it have a value and is landfill the most cost-effective solution?

“There’s a cost burden on harbour authorities for disposing of end-of-life fishing gear in landfill,” says Gus Caslake, “and that cost is reflected in the price fishermen pay for harbour dues.”

Gus, Seafish Regional Manager for South West England, has recently completed an assessment comparing the costs of recycling fishing gear compared to landfill.

Gus Caslake, SW England Regional Manager, Seafish

Fishing gear can be made from many different materials. Most gillnets are made from nylon, whereas most trawls are made from polyethylene.

“Nylon is very versatile and relatively easy to recycle so it can have a higher scrap value," says Gus. "Polyethylene, on the other hand is not as widely recycled so the cost of sending it to a recycling centre can be greater."

That’s not to say that polyethylene can’t or shouldn’t be recycled. Several initiatives around the world recycle polyethylene from end of life fishing gear into sunglasses, surfboards and more.

The original idea was to prove that waste plastic has a value and can again be turned into another product and reused. I wanted people to see it in context.

Rob Thompson, speaking to Cornwall Live

Rob Thompson’s company Odyssey Innovation offers net recycling solutions. With support from Seafish and Morrisons, Rob has established a network of collection points in the South West for depositing end-of-life fishing gear. He then arranges for a lorry to take the deposited nets to their recycling partner Plastix in Denmark who specialise in recycling end-of-life fishing gear.

Plastix pay Rob for the materials and believe that “the scarcity of resources means that waste is increasingly becoming a source of income rather than just a nuisance.”

Rob’s model pays for itself. The recycling centre views the polyethylene as a valuable material, not a waste product that needs to be disposed of. Rob is paid for the material, which covers the cost of transport, and he even gets some of the end product returned to him which his company makes into kayaks. This is the goal in a circular economy: for materials to be recycled and remain in use when an item's usable lifespan ends.

But most fishing gear is made up of much more than just polyethylene.

“Take an average beam trawl,” says Gus, “it might weigh about 1,800kg in total but the amount of polyethylene that can be recycled only makes up a fraction of that, say about 300kg.”

A single beam trawl is made of several different materials including steel, rubber, polyethylene and nylon. When recycling fishing gear, all of these materials have to be separated properly and sent to the right recycling facilities.

Separating the materials is a difficult but vital step. If harbour authorities send materials for recycling that haven’t been properly separated they’re just shifting the problem to someone else.

“It could take a net maker 10 to 12 hours to put a trawl together and maybe five or six to take it apart,” says Gus. “It’s a very intensive process, steel and saltwater don’t go together well so it can be badly rusted and the net can be very worn and full of sand from being towed along the seabed.”

So how much potential income is there in end-of-life fishing gear? Would it be cheaper for harbour authorities to recycle it instead of sending it to landfill? That’s what Gus hopes to find out.

“We looked at an average beam trawl,” says Gus. “We measured the weight of each of the component parts to calculate how much of each material makes up the gear. We then looked at how much it costs to recycle the materials and compared it to the cost of disposing of the gear in landfill.”

The cost of recycling depends on how easy it is to repurpose the material, the market for the end product and the distance to recycling facilities. “For each harbour the cost of recycling end-of-life gear will be different,” says Gus. “Harbour authorities will need to make a value judgement, case by case, to decide if it’s cheaper sending some or all of the materials for recycling or continue with landfill.”

Gus found that the cost of recycling a 12m beam trawl (excluding chain mat) is about £235.

In 2018, the UK Government announced a new Resource and Waste Strategy outlining changes to the way the UK deals with plastic waste. The strategy aims to “preserve material resources by minimising waste, promoting resource efficiency and moving towards a circular economy.”

Key to the success of this strategy is a change in perspective. Manufacturers and the general public need to rethink waste and start viewing it as a valuable resource.

Over time, as the value of ‘waste’ increases the cost of recycling will go down. “Personally my hope is that in the future 100% of fishing gear will be recycled,” says Gus.

“Right now that might not be cost-effective for all harbour authorities, but I certainly believe that in the short term most of them can at least reduce the cost burden from landfill and pass the cost saving to the fishermen paying harbour dues.”

For more information contact: richard.caslake@seafish.co.uk

Waste Management Initiative

The 2019 Single-Use Plastics Directive introduces measures to prevent and reduce the impact of certain plastic products, and promote the transition to a circular economy, which keeps resources in use for as long as possible. The Directive takes an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) approach, which means that manufacturers of plastic fishing gear will be required to cover the costs of waste collection at and transport from ports and subsequent treatment, as well as measures to raise awareness.

Seafish identified a need to get clarity around current practice so it brought in intern Ben Smith to work with its Responsible Sourcing team over summer 2019. He carried out a survey of UK fishing net manufacturers to assess business awareness and preparedness for an EPR scheme.

A survey was also carried out with Port Authorities to help Seafish understand the main waste management routes being used and the current challenges in recycling end-of-life fishing gears.

Ben also conducted research and carried out a series of site visits to inform a set of good practice case studies. These case studies are available from the Seafish website and will used to help to inform future work in this area on behalf of the UK seafood supply chain.

For more information contact lewis.tattersall@seafish.co.uk