Fishing gear has a working life before it has an afterlife. Nets are repaired, panels are replaced, ropes are shortened and damaged components are kept for parts. When a piece of gear finally leaves service, “what happens next” is not one system. It is a fork in the road.
Some gear comes back to port and enters a local waste stream. Some is stored because disposal costs money or a future use still seems possible. Some is collected through a dedicated take-back or harbour programme. Some is lost at sea during storms, through snagging, conflicts between fishing activities or other operational events. And some gear is deliberately abandoned.
The useful distinction is therefore not simply used versus discarded. It is controlled versus uncontrolled.
First: be careful with the headline numbers
Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear is usually shortened to ALDFG. It is a serious source of marine litter and can keep catching animals after it has stopped catching value for a fisher—a process often called ghost fishing.
But the scale is difficult to measure. A foundational technical review by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and UNEP said the available information was not comprehensive enough to support a global estimate. The report identified gillnets and traps or pots as especially relevant for ghost fishing, while also describing impacts including entanglement, habitat damage and navigational hazards.
That uncertainty matters. Repeating one dramatic global number may be persuasive, but it can hide differences between fisheries, regions, gear types and reporting systems. Better questions are more specific: Which gear? Which fleet? Which coastline? Which period? Which method of estimation?
Route one: repair and reuse
Commercial fishing gear is equipment, not disposable packaging. A damaged section can be cut out and replaced; ropes, floats, metal components and intact netting can be separated for reuse. This extends service life and preserves more of the work and material already invested in the gear.
Reuse is also the least visible route. It happens inside workshops, harbours and fishing businesses rather than in recycling statistics. That makes it easy to overlook when discussing “end of life.”
Route two: collection on land
Gear that returns to shore can only enter a controlled treatment route if collection exists and is practical. FAO identifies access to—and the cost and availability of—shore-side collection facilities as one of the factors influencing abandonment or loss.
Collection is not the same as recycling. A harbour may accept old gear, but the material still has to be identified, stored, transported, cleaned and separated. Nets may contain several polymers plus ropes, floats, coatings, metal and biological contamination. The economic question is whether a usable material fraction can cover enough of that work.
Route three: material recovery
“Fishing net” is not a polymer specification. Different netting and components can use polyamide (nylon), polyethylene, polypropylene and other materials. A credible recycling claim therefore begins with identification and sorting, not with the object’s maritime origin.
Cleaner, consistent streams are easier to process than mixed or heavily contaminated ones. Mechanical recycling may be suitable for some fractions; other routes may be technically possible but economically or environmentally weak in a particular location. The output also needs a buyer with specifications the recovered material can meet.
This is where many circular stories become less cinematic and more important: logistics, quality control and repeat demand decide whether a recovered stream becomes feedstock or remains a disposal problem.
Route four: disposal
If gear cannot be reused or recycled, it may be incinerated, landfilled or handled through another regulated waste route, depending on local infrastructure and law. Those are not equivalent outcomes, but both are controlled outcomes in a way that loss at sea is not.
The honest hierarchy is not “everything becomes a new product.” It is: prevent avoidable loss; keep gear in use; recover material where the evidence and infrastructure support it; and manage the remainder safely.
Route five: loss at sea
Once gear is lost, recovery becomes uncertain and potentially dangerous. Location data, ownership, depth, weather, entanglement risk and ecological sensitivity all matter. A recovery operation can itself disturb habitats or put crews at risk. “Remove it” is not always a complete operational plan.
Prevention can include gear marking, better reporting, access to disposal, retrieval planning and management measures tailored to a fishery. FAO is running a global survey to improve evidence on the causes, amounts and impacts of ALDFG—an important sign that the global data gap is still being worked on rather than solved.
The most credible circular route starts before a net becomes waste: with traceability, maintenance, collection access and a known material specification.
What to ask when a product claims to use old fishing gear
Ask what the input actually was, where it was collected, which polymer fraction was recovered, how contamination was handled, what share of the final product is recycled material, and which chain-of-custody or mass-balance method supports the claim. “Ocean-bound,” “marine” and “fishing gear” describe different things and should not be treated as interchangeable.
That level of detail does not weaken the story. It is the story.
Sources & further reading
- FAO and UNEP, Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear, Technical Paper No. 523, 2009.
- FAO, Global ALDFG Survey.
- IMO, Marine litter: work on fishing gear and sea-based sources.
Editorial note: This explainer describes general routes. Actual waste classification, handling requirements and viable recycling options depend on the gear, jurisdiction and receiving facility.