Jean Zeid
06:51, June 25, 2024
Every morning, Jean Zeid delivers the best in terms of innovation. This Tuesday, he is interested in the startup Fil&Fab which recovers and recycles fishing nets.
This Tuesday morning, we’re going fishing.
We take advantage of the sun in this column and we try to save fishing nets more precisely, nets which represent one of the main sources of waste in ports in France. If I take the example of Finistère, we are talking about several hundred tonnes of fishing nets thrown away to be incinerated or buried. In 2015, Yann Louboutin and two BTS students in product design wondered if it would not be possible to recycle these fishing nets and find a way to recycle them. They created the Brest startup Fil&Fab in 2019.
Didn’t recycled fishing nets exist?
Yes, but recycled fishing nets to make something else, it’s more original. These nets are in fact made of polyamide 6, a plastic that is easy to recycle and used in many areas. More precisely, it is found in gill nets and trammel nets, the two types of nets recycled by the company Fil&Fab. In a few years, it built a small industrial network. From the collection of the nets to the marketing at the end of the chain of the granules made from this Polyamide 6. They also gave it a little name: Nylo, and all this is managed by the small Brest company. Recovered fishing nets are first sorted to ensure the best possible quality recycling. They are crushed and transformed into pellets.
What can these granules be used for?
Well, these Nylo are integrated into the manufacture of many everyday objects. In 2016, it started with a melted fishnet espadrille. Since then, it has diversified quite a bit: glasses in particular for the Armor Lux brand, watch dials. The pellets are also transformed into surf fins or kayak fins.
It must be said that this material has rather remarkable properties: thermal resistance but also shock and traction and it is traceable. Fil&Lab can determine where the nets used come from.
There are still prerequisites for this recycling.
Before being placed in the recovery bins, the nets must be cleaned and what we call disarmed, relieved of everything that is not the net ply, because it is this which is made of polyamide 6 and it is she who can be recycled. The lids of recycling bins must be tightly closed to avoid degradation of the nets by UV rays or pollution by household waste.
Fil&Lab which has a lot of ideas and is working to recreate textile thread from Nylo. And why not re-make fishing nets one day?
