We aim to stop end-of-life fishing gear ending up in landfill or worse the sea, and instead recycle it into useful everyday items.
by Sea Trust Wales in Goodwick, Wales, United Kingdom
Extra funding will both expand and extend the project. With more funds we can purchase extra bins and place them in more harbours, perhaps even reaching beyond Pembrokeshire covering more small harbours around Wales. Sea Trust will also be able to continue collecting fishing waste from harbours for longer, meaning more can be recycled.
A single abandoned net is estimated to kill 500,000 invertebrates, 1,700 fish and 4 seabirds! End of Life (EoL) fishing gear is a well-known problem that causes vast amounts of damage to wildlife and to the economy. There is poor management of the waste in Wales with many harbours having inadequate or no waste facilities for commercial fishers. If there are waste facilities present, very little is being recycled.
Recycle Môr aims to reduce the problems caused by abandoned fishing waste by providing free to use, easily accessible, EoL fishing gear recycling bins in all commercial harbours. This removes physical and financial barriers to fishers ensuring the return of these materials back to land, while also encouraging the capture of discarded harmful fishing gear and plastic seen while at sea. The waste is then recycled into useful everyday products. Fishing rope and nets last hundreds of years in the environment as they are made to be as strong as possible. It is these properties that make them perfect to be recycled into high quality products such as sunglasses, litter pickers, litter picking bag hoops, and knives.
The Recycle Môr project started initially as a short/small-scale feasibility study but it soon became very successful in collecting waste! It has now been running for nearly 2 years and with the help of our local fishers we have recycled around 7 tonnes of EoL fishing gear. Unfortunately, when designing the project, we at Sea Trust, underestimated the amount of waste we would collect, and we no longer have the resources to keep up with the demand.
There are currently 9 recycling bins collecting waste everyday located around Pembrokeshire. We are now at risk of losing the bins because we cannot afford to keep collecting the waste as regularly as needed. The last thing we want to do is take away the bins because we can no longer empty them.
Any funds raised will go towards materials, transport and postage costs. This means we can travel to the bins collecting the waste regularly and post it to where it is transformed into beautiful new products. Any extra funds will go towards the expansion of the project, with a long term aim of a nationwide project.