Egersund Net helps recycle 17,000 metric tons of discarded aquaculture equipment

Environmental savings estimated at over 51,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide

Over the past 12 years, Egersund Net, a Norway-based total supplier of trawling equipment, has delivered a whopping 17,000 metric tons of discarded nets and other aquaculture equipment to Nofir – a Norwegian company that collects and recycles discarded fishing and aquaculture equipment. Of the submitted aquaculture materials, 2,225 MT were delivered in 2021 alone and up to 78 percent have been recycled back to the industry.

“We work actively to reduce our environmental footprint in all processes and to contribute to improvement in the entire industry,” said Glenn Mo, the General Manager of Egersund Net. “We are happy if we can help to pioneer the recycling industry – this is something we will continue to work on a lot.”

Mo said that recycling is an important part of the sustainability strategy for both Egersund Net and the owner company, AKVA group. For over a decade, the company has worked closely with Nofir on the collection and recycling of discarded nets and other equipment for aquaculture. Nylon netting makes for about 60 percent of the submitted materials and has been regenerated into Nylon filaments (ECONYL®), which are sold to the textile industry for producing new products, such as clothing and carpets.

According to Nofir’s analysis, 17,000 MT of aquaculture equipment corresponds to environmental savings of 51,200 MT of carbon dioxide (CO2) and 26,100 MT of oil equivalents. The former corresponds to about 465,000 flights from Oslo to London.

“These are absolutely fantastic figures and Egersund Net on behalf of its customers has been a large part of Nofir’s total amount of the collected nets and other equipment during these years,” Øistein Aleksandersen, Manager of Nofir. “It is thanks to such partnerships that we are constantly reaching new heights for how much we are able to recycle. The fact that most of this turns into new products is extra fun.”

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