Support Measures

Fix collectors at sea around the farms to collect waste at the sea surface. Increase the number of companies collecting and cleaning material in the water column and bottom (including divers). Use the current farmer’s associations as the basis to establish collaboration schemes to facilitate recycling and removal activities. Collaborate with the fishing sector to collect garbage in the sea Enhance collaboration with Marine Protected areas authorities, environmental institutions and NGOs in order to ensure a constant support for marine litter removing. Create synergies among the European countries to facilitate the setting up of removal and recycling systems. It is essential to add specific and easily accessible aquaculture gear collection points as close as possible to the aquaculture installations. In the case of the offshore farms, the collection points could be located in the port reception facilities. In the case of nearshore or onshore aquaculture facilities, waste collection points could be located nearby the farms, or gear producers could set a door-to-door pick up scheme. Aquaculture gear collection points could also be addressed to fisheries activities. Provide disposal points targeting specific material and/or gear, such as mussel nets, anti-predator nets, etc. In this way, concentrating bigger amount of waste in one point and hiring a company for the disposal operations can become economically feasible. Support the creation of deposit schemes for cages and passive aquaculture gear to raise the return rate of those products (including non-valuable items and/or single-use-items), with the aim to promote the reutilization and the recycling of the aquaculture elements once they get to the end of their life cycle. The aquaculture deposit schemes could be shared with fishermen Optimise existing recycling plants, including the cost reduction of bringing the aquaculture gear to waste management points. Therefore, prices should be adapted to the farmer volume production or economical benefits, not only to the volume of the gear that is collected and brought. " Support and promote the upcycling processes to ensure the economical viability of the 5R’s schemes regarding the aquaculture gear. For example, using nets to produce more expensive items (e.g. nylon for textiles) can help to cover the costs associated to the EPR systems, avoiding extra economical efforts for farmers and consumers. Support the valorisation of the waste market (look for markets): create businesses that use another type of material (not just nylon for example) to assess the type of waste and increase the demand of such materials. Support the development of waste flows which include as much types of polymers as possible, and increase the number of plants that treat all types of polymers.