It’s easy to throw a can or bottle in the bin and never think about it again, but for fishing net recyclers in Bristol Bay, drop off is just the first step in the recycling process. In Dillingham, a backlog of used fishing nets poses a challenge for local recycling programs.
Nicole Baker is the owner of Net Your Problem, a company that recycles fishing gear. She explains that in order to be processed for recycling, used fishing nets need to be free of debris.
“Basically, you can see that there's like a piece of seaweed on every single knot of the mesh,” Baker said. The dirty net she’s holding is covered in dried seaweed and knotted bits of twine. She turns and picks up a cleaner, bluer looking bag of netting.
“ Generally speaking, this is what we are looking for,” Baker said. “Very limited organic material, no twine.” This net is clean enough to be thrown into a recycling baler, a machine that compresses and wraps the nylon netting into something that looks like a blue bale of hay.
Net Your Problem collects used fishing nets across the country, including at several Bristol Bay locations: Dillingham, Naknek and Coffee Point. Ultimately, the webbing will be shipped out of state and sold to a recycler. From there, the old nets are shredded and melted down into little plastic pellets.
Baker says those plastic pellets can be made into things like glasses, kayaks or picnic tables. Before the nets can be made into a new item, they first need to be cleaned, packed, and shipped out of Dillingham.
Patty Buholm is the Curyung Tribal Council's Environmental Program Coordinator. She started in 2024.
“We have nets on the ground from probably six, seven, eight years ago because there's so much web that comes from our community,” Buholm said.
The Curyung Tribal Council has had a net recycling program in Dillingham for years– but partnered with Net Your Problem back in 2019. Buholm says there's still a backlog of old nets.
This season, Buholm says she's working with three summer interns funded by the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation. Together, they will clean any lingering debris off of old nets and get them shipped for recycling.
The recycling baler has also been moved from outside the tribal council office to indoors. It’s now in the Herman Schroeder building so that Buholm and her team can keep working in the rain and snow.
Buholm says she's been working to communicate how clean fishing nets need to be before they’re recycled.
“We've been walking around and talking to boatyard owners, physically showing them what is not acceptable and what is acceptable for web drop off,” Buholm said.
A few years ago, Baker says her goal was just to get people to switch from the landfill to recycling. Her goal now is to encourage fishermen to drop off cleaner nets, so that processing the nets before shipping is faster and easier.
She says to keep twine from getting tangled in the net, she’s suggesting that people strip their lines by first stacking their net, tying it from the middle and then hanging it. Baker says that way, the lines have some tension and the twine just falls to the ground.
Baker says that in the fishing community, word of mouth is powerful – somebody says they’ve caught fifty fish in a net, and in a few hours, everyone knows. She says she hopes that her message around net recycling spreads the same way.
