Upcycling abandoned fishing nets into UNTANGLE IT clothes materials

Have you ever heard of the term “ghost fishing”? Ghost fishing or ghost gear refers to fishing gear lost, dumped, or abandoned in the ocean. Among them are fishing nets that cause a great threat to marine life.

UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) estimates that roughly 640,000 tons of fishing gear, including fishing nets, get released into the ocean every year. These fishing gears drift in the ocean and get tangled with sea creatures, unintentionally “capturing” them. What’s more, fishing nets are made of synthetic fibers and have excellent durability and abrasion resistance, which allows them to continue drifting in the ocean without decaying.

Toyoshima & Co. Ltd., a textile industry expert in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, launched “UNTANGLE IT,” an initiative to collect discarded fishing nets and use them as fiber raw materials. They collaborated with SHINDO Co. Ltd., a company in Fukui Prefecture, which plans, manufactures, and sells auxiliary clothing materials for apparel and sports clothing. The two companies agreed to form a brand partner collaboration to develop new products of UNTANGLE IT. They began with developing high-quality fiber tapes for clothing using UNTANGLE IT fibers.

A system for collecting and upcycling discarded fishing nets is already underway. The whole point of the project is to make the most of marine debris collected to process, sort and produce fibers suitable for apparel items. With the mission to “do ​​what they can now, to protect the environment of the ocean,” they hope to continue developing and producing fabrics, clothing accessories, and apparel items using the fibers produced through this system. This, they say, is an initiative that contributes to the “Creation of earth-friendly materials,” which is one of the five missions of the SDGs Declaration announced by Toyoshima & Co. Ltd. in June 2020.

Through the initiative of reproducing fishing nets, the companies hope to raise awareness among people that “fishing nets can be reused.” Moreover, they hope more people will actively collect these nets, which will ultimately help reduce ghost fishing in the future.