American Seafoods partnered with local woman-owned startup Net Your Problem for the first time Tuesday to recycle midwater trawling nets at Terminal 91 with the help of volunteers.

All of the recovered materials are kept out of landfills and given new life. Nicole Baker, a former North Pacific fisheries observer and current University of Washington research scientist, launched Net Your Problem to divert plastic waste and nets from the fishing industry out of the ocean and landfills.

The nets are about four to five years old and can no longer be used to catch pollock. Old nets are often just stored and sometimes sent to Europe to be recycled. This is the first year American Seafoods is doing the recycling work themselves. They recovered 19,000 pounds of plastic, all of which will be used for additional products or other uses. Roughly 60% of the plastic they recovered was polypropylene, 19% was nylon, 8% was high density polyethylene, and 13% were mixed materials.

Tim Fitzgerald, chief sustainability officer and public affairs with American Seafoods, said the company could pay to store the trawling nets, throw them away or recycle them. They chose to recycle.

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