‘When I pass piles of fishing nets, I see piles of money’: a one man recycling revolution on the Cornish coast | Fishing

IA falconer kept thinking about the piles of abandoned plastic fishing nets he saw in Newlyn Harbour, near his home in Cornwall. “I thought it was such a waste,” he said. “There has to be a better solution than putting it all in landfill.” »

Falconer, 52, who studied environmental and mining geology at university, hatched a plan: shred and clean the spent nets, melt the plastic and convert it into filament for 3D printing. He then built a “microfactory” so that the filament could be transformed into a useful object.

“Every year, up to a million tonnes of fishing nets are discarded,” he says. “Most of it ends up in landfills or is burned, or worse yet, goes back into the oceans. This shows that there is another way to recover some of these materials.”

The first big challenge he faced when he started in 2016 was getting the nets. But he pestered the harbormaster at Newlyn to give him some to test his theory in his kitchen.

Since its launch the following year, Falconer’s OrCA (formerly Fishy Filaments) has raised more than £1 million from small investors in more than 40 countries. The investment funded the development of new patented machines capable of processing more than 20 kilos of nylon fishing nets per hour. He says the recycling process accounts for less than 3% of the carbon impact of producing new nylon.

“When they come to us, this particular type of fishing net has generally been in use by Cornish fishermen for about six months,” he explains. “They are regularly replaced because their surfaces become cloudy due to wear and the buildup of algae biofilm. Over time and repeated use, fish can eventually detect them in the water and avoid them.”

“Captains may see their catches decline as their nets age and it makes sense to replace them.”

The threads that go into the mill come in the form of small blue-green beads that Falconer sells to 3D printing companies, who turn them into strings of filaments used in 3D printing. They are also sold around the world to replace new plastic in more conventional products made by injection molding.

Falconer’s shipping container office is full of items made from the raw material: sunglasses, sunglasses, bottle openers, razor blade handles. It can be used for just about anything. The items he is most proud of are those made from his nylon blended with carbon fiber waste – mainly from car and aircraft manufacturing scraps. This stronger, more expensive product is used to make parts for ultra-lightweight racing bikes and sunglasses, as well as industrial components such as electronic housings.

The blend of carbon and nylon sells for up to £35,000 per tonne, more than the £12,000 per tonne for pure nylon beads. “Our process turns a liability of around £500 a tonne to pay for someone to remove the nets, not to mention the environmental cost of that, into something of real value,” says Falconer. “Now when I walk past the piles of fishing nets at the harbor, I see piles of money.”

Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear is one of the most serious threats to marine life, says Rachel Coppock, a marine ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, adding that innovative ideas to reduce this phenomenon are welcome.

“Recycling programs are increasingly seen as viable and beneficial because they demonstrate how old equipment can be transformed into new products, thereby reducing landfill waste and supporting a circular economy,” she says. “Although challenges remain in scaling up these efforts due to hardware complexity and infrastructure gaps. »

Falconer’s client list, which includes Philips Lighting, L’Oréal, Ford and Mercedes-Benz, is growing as more companies see the potential for OrCA to help them reduce their carbon footprint by increasing the proportion of their products made from recycled materials.

“The European Union wants car manufacturers to use at least 20% recycled plastic by 2035,” he says. “Using ours is one of the easiest ways to do this.”

Falconer could well make a living continuing to recycle the nets of Newlyn fishermen, but his ambitions are wider. “Fishing net waste is a problem here in Cornwall, but the same type of nets are a much bigger problem in other countries, particularly those without established waste management systems,” he says. “Around Africa, South and Central America and Asia, you see these nets littering the beaches.”

Many of these countries don’t have the equipment to recycle the nets, he says, and so they are burned or simply left as waste. “They even end up in the water where they can damage coral reefs and harm marine life, including the fisheries that local communities rely on for food. »

Around 150,000 tonnes of nylon monofilament fishing nets are manufactured each year and, based on external reports, Falconer estimates that production will soon reach 200,000 tonnes. Total global capacity for traditional nylon recycling is less than 150,000 tonnes per year, less than half the capacity European automakers need to meet their targets, and almost all of this capacity is devoted to recycling carpets and other textiles.

To try to combat this problem, Falconer plans to export its recycling solution to any port that wants it. A container fitted with all the equipment needed to operate a mini recycling plant would cost around $500,000 (£370,000) if built in the UK.

Falconer says he has already received requests from 14 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, South Africa and Vietnam.

“The beauty of it is that it all fits in a shipping container and pretty much anyone can use it,” he says. “You could have one in every port in the world, turning a costly and dangerous waste into a profitable raw material. »