In 2012, a Philippine coastal project began turning discarded fishing nets into carpet tiles; six years later, UNEP reported 61 tonnes collected and 41 tonnes recycled

Somewhere between the Philippine Islands and a factory floor, the tangled, sun-blasted fishnets you see in your office space in Brooklyn or dorm space in Austin have been given a fresh lease of life. Although it may seem a little too neat, this is actually happening. According to a UNEP briefing document, since the start of Net-Works in 2012, around 61 tonnes of old fishnets have been taken from coastal communities in the Philippines. Approximately 41 tonnes of these were then recycled into new products.

Why this matters more than you think

Fishnets are made of nylon, so rather than biodegrade, they float around and wrap around coral. This causes a phenomenon known as ghost fishing, as they continuously catch things long after the fishermen have left. Researchers long relied on a rough estimate from a study conducted in the 1970s and 80s on how much fishing gear was entering the world’s oceans: a figure that, as later research would show, was both outdated and widely misquoted.

That outdated baseline is exactly what more recent research set out to correct; not to update the Philippine totals above, but to establish, for the first time, how much gear is lost globally each year. In a 2022 study titled “Global estimates of fishing gear lost to the ocean each year,” published in the journal Science Advances, researchers found the old estimate was outdated and poorly quoted when they questioned hundreds of fishers in seven countries. This led to them discovering that nearly 2% of all commercial fishing gear enters our oceans every year, including over 25 million pots and traps and approximately 740,000km of longline. This is enough to circle the Earth several times.

A different meta-analysis was carried out in the 2019 paper titled “Estimates of fishing gear loss rates at a global scale: A literature review and meta-analysis,” published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, which found that close to 6% of all fishing nets globally were lost each year. Either way, this is one of the more persistent and rarely spoken about forms of ocean plastic. Taken together, these two studies describe the scale of the global problem that local efforts like Net-Works are chipping away at, they are context for the Philippine project, not a revised count of its results.

How a net becomes a tile

The Net-Works project involves a partnership between conservation charity Zoological Society of London and carpet company Interface. Old or damaged nets are collected from local fishing communities. These nets are then sold to collection centres in the area, where fishers are paid not in direct cash but in credit deposited into community-run microfinance savings accounts; so the transaction is still a sale, just one settled through a savings-group ledger rather than banknotes changing hands. Once they’ve been baled, they are sent off and turned into nylon thread. This thread is then woven into carpet tiles. This isn’t exactly an eye-catching project, but arguably this is why it has been so successful.

Firstly, not all fishing nets can be recycled. Only certain types of nylon can be used, so a large amount of fishing gear globally can’t be used in this sort of project. Also, whilst the project is well organised, it is fighting a losing battle. 41 tonnes being recycled in 6 years is impressive, but when considering thousands of kilometres of line and millions of traps are lost each year globally, there is clearly a long way to go.

What this actually means

This certainly isn’t a reason not to buy a nicer rug. This is an example of turning a waste stream into a resource. This is something more industries should take note of. For those of you who like to know where the raw materials of your product come from, knowing that a piece of ocean rubbish may be doing some behind-the-scenes work to support your living room is a nice thought.