Support measures

Offer a sorting system for different materials: a distinction must be made between light plastics (polyolefins, polyethylene PE and polypropylene PP) and high-density polymers (polyamide, PET). PP and PE are already being recycled into granules. Since PA and PET do not float during processing, the processes for recycling are still in development

Support for waste management Support for waste management

Socking material - Efthalia Arvaniti Socking material - Efthalia Arvaniti

Relevant type of aquaculture:

Fish Shellfish Seaweed

Relevant sea basin:

Baltic

Relevant stage:

Removal and recycling

Related Barriers:

  • Market incentives for the effective participation in separate collection or for the return of special types of aquaculture gear (like cages) in the form of deposit return schemes are lacking.

  • Procedures for dismantling are not economically efficient today and should be further optimized. Manual dismantling processes only exist in some Baltic Sea countries and transport across countries is expensive.

  • Weak transport opportunities of gear between ports and recycling facilities.

  • There is a lack of waste management infrastructure with, e.g. insufficient opportunities to collect, sort and reuse waste in ports or other defined collection sites.

Related Good Practice:

R&R GP1.2

Separate collection to facilitate recycling

Plastix (Denmark) tests the installation of different containers to facilitate the collection of different materials already at collection points. The company names the following steps for recycling: Cutting, washing to remove salts, separation by flotation of PE and PP from PA. Plastix recycles only PE and PP itself, other companies like Antex recycles PA, and flotation itself is not a problem unless clean material is processed without sediment. A first result of the Plastix pilot project for separate collection is that separation does not always work and needs training of the farmers and fishermens. Therefore, in their normal processes, the material types are still sorted out by hand before they were processed; flotation is not used so far.