Between October 2025 and September 2026, our volunteers pulled 2.1 tonnes of fishing net and rope off 46 beaches on the north coast. Here is where it came from, what happened to it, and what we are changing next year.
Where the netting comes from
Most of what we collect was not dumped on purpose. It was lost: nets torn on rocks, rope cut loose in storms, and the short offcuts that crews trim at sea and that slip over the side. Once it is in the water it can drift for years before a winter storm throws it onto a beach.
The worst months, as always, were January and February. After the mid-January storms, one clean-up at a single cove brought in 160 kilograms in two hours, most of it one tangle of net that took eleven people to drag up the slipway.
We weigh everything we bring off a beach, wet, on a hanging scale at the van, and log the beach, the date and the type of material. That record is where every number in this post comes from, and we share it each month with a marine survey team.
The good news is that the amount of new net we find is slowly falling. Two harbors now have bins for old gear on the quay, and more crews use them every month.
What happens to it
Netting is hard to recycle: it is a mix of plastics, and it comes off the beach full of sand and salt. This year, for the first time, most of it was recycled instead of going to landfill.
- 1.3 twent to a recycler who turns it into pellets for new plastic products.
- 0.5 tof rope was washed and given to gardeners, a boatyard and two schools.
- 0.3 twas too dirty or too mixed to recycle, and went to landfill.
Washing and sorting it took our volunteers more than 600 hours. It is the part of the work nobody sees, and the part we most need help with.
What we are changing next year
We are adding twelve beaches on the south coast, starting in November. We will also run a monthly sorting day in the shed at our base, so volunteers who cannot manage cliff paths can still help.
And we have set ourselves a goal: three tonnes by the end of September 2027, with less than a tenth going to landfill. The bar at the top of this page will show how close we get.
Finally, we are working with the two harbors that already have gear bins to add a third, at the busiest port on our stretch of coast. Every net handed in on a quay is one we never have to cut out of the rocks.
