Fishing gear recycling scheme
Welsh Government along with Odyssey Innovation Ltd will be implementing a small-scale replica of the Net Regeneration Scheme as a pilot project focused on creating free port reception facilities in selected Welsh harbours to recycle fishing gear and in doing so will help support the fishing community in tackling marine plastic.
The pilot project will also be engaging with several Welsh stakeholders such as fishing gear manufacturers, charities and beach-clean communities to maximize the benefit of the scheme to the local community and environment.
Participants enlisted in this pilot project are Fishguard, Milford Haven, Holyhead, Keep Wales Tidy and Surfers Against Sewage.
In response to the threat caused by the marine litter crisis, the Welsh Government has teamed up with the marine waste specialist firm Odyssey Innovation Ltd, creators of the Net Regeneration Scheme, in an unprecedented project for the Welsh fishing communities to offer a sustainable solution for end of life fishing gear such as whelk pots, buoys, ropes, net, floating pontoons and any other recyclable plastics.
Odyssey Innovation's Net Regeneration Scheme is the only scheme in the UK that offers free net recycling solutions of Polyethylene trawl, Nylon and other plastic generated and recovered by the fishing industry. Everything that can be recycled in the UK is recycled locally and we use specialist recyclers in Europe to recycle any problematic materials. The Net Regeneration Scheme has additional benefits in reducing CO2 by putting recycled plastic back into the economy, which has a significant CO2 saving over using new virgin plastic. It covers the cost of transporting the gear to plastics recyclers and closes the ‘recycling loop’ by converting the
plastic waste back into products such as kayaks, surfing hand plates, tote boxes, and recycling bins.