Healthy Seas– from waste to wear
Healthy Seas was founded in 2013 to tackle the ghost fishing phenomenon which is responsible for the needless death of marine animals. Through cleanups with volunteer divers and by working with stakeholders of the fishing sector toward marine litter prevention, the organisation collects waste nets and ensures they become a valuable resource to its partners for the creation of new products such as: brand new ECONYL® yarn for the fashion and interior industries.
Healthy Seas Impact
In September 2019, Healthy Seas became the recipient of the Circular Economy Award at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards held in Milan, Italy.
Healthy Seas established partnerships with the frontrunners of the recycling industry to make sure that the waste collect will be handled, in the best possible way. Healthy Seas makes sure that the nylon nets that are collected are regenerated by Aquafil to produce ECONYL® yarn. As well as being a solution on waste, ECONYL® regenerated nylon is also better when it comes to climate change. It reduces the global warming impact of nylon by up to 90% compared with the material from oil.
For every 10,000 tons of ECONYL® raw material, Aquafil saves 70,000 barrels of crude oil and avoid 65,100 tonnes of CO2 eq. emissions
Climate change mitigation and CO2 reduction
After every shipment of the collected nets, the dispatcher is provided with an ‘Environmental receipt’ and ‘Net dismantling report’ which indicates the environmental benefits of their action in terms of (1) reduced oil consumption and (2) reduced CO2 emissions.
An example of a shipment
The collection of 11,330 kgs of fishing nets by fishermen results:
In terms of environmental benefits:
Decrease in carbon footprint is about 40,788 kg CO2 eq
Decrease in non-renewable resources is about 19,261 kg oil eq.
In terms of material recycling:
Total nylon: 4,840 kg
Other material: 6,490 kg
Percentage of nylon: 43%
The Data source reference: www.nofir.no
