Recycling their own nets: A great challenge for artisanal fishermen

 
Fishing gear is the deadliest type of plastic debris for marine species and represents approximately 10% of marine litter. In this sense, WWF Peru created RedCicla, an initiative that motivates artisanal fishermen to collect and recycle fishing nets at the end of their useful life. That prevents them from reaching the sea and becoming the most damaging plastic threat to our marine ecosystems. 
 
The project is focused on sensitizing the communities, and also, promoting work with artisanal fishermen for the responsible collection of nets at the landing sites, to reduce the amount of nets poorly discarded at sea. Different fishermen's unions collect nets in an articulated work with administrative personnel of the landing sites, port captain's offices, municipalities, among others.
 
HOW DOES IT WORK?
 
The fishermen or collectors take the nets at the end-of-life properly cleaned to the collection booths.  Then they are weighed and kept together. After that, the WWF team and Bureo, who are technical partners, recycle these nets and give them a new use.
 
PROGRESS WITH THE GATHERED NETS
 
With the collected nets, the team recycles nylon (material of which monofilament nets are made). Nadia Balducci, Clean Oceans team leader, explains that they made 100% recycled nylon panels. "For this, we made a laboratory analysis using thermo-compression technology, which has a low environmental impact and is capable of being adapted to a community scale”.
 
Tests are currently being executed in order to choose the final product of the panels generated, it is important to turn them into a tool that is useful for fishermen during their operations. For this, it is necessary to evaluate what other technologies allow to have a result with a better and lasting finish.