CASE Study - Circular ocean

How can fishing net waste enter the circular economy, as a ressource for local businesses and contribute to more healthy oceans?

Why

In pursuit of innovative and sustainable solutions for marine plastic waste, the Circular Ocean project seeks to inspire enterprises and entrepreneurs to realise the hidden opportunities of discarded fishing nets and ropes in the Northern Periphery & Arctic (NPA) region.

It is estimated that up to 8 million tonnes of plastic enters the sea each year, causing serious damage to our ocean environment and marine ecosystems.

The project will act as a catalyst to motivate and empower remote communities to develop sustainable and green business opportunities that will enhance income generation and retention within local regions.

How

Through transnational collaboration and eco-innovation, Circular Ocean developed, shared and tested new sustainable solutions to incentivise the collection and reprocessing of discarded fishing nets and assist the movement towards a more circular economy.

The project had a special focus on providing inspiration for turning fishing net waste into new startups and business opportunities in a local circular economy.

A series of workshops, conferences and net hack challenges with a broad aray of stakeholders was key to develop the ideas in the project.
Also, we launched an open source innovation competition for attracting new ideas that enable used fishing nets and ropes through e.g. innovative material processing, technology, local machinery, systems or business models.

What

Together with an international consortium Co-Creative developed and fundraised the Circular Ocean project with funds from the EU ERDF Interreg VB Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) Programme.

One of the outputs of the awardwinning project was an Eco-innovation Guide for Start-ups, Entrepreneurs & Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises that we wrote together with Centre for Sustainable Design. Have a look at it here >>

Client: Centre for Sustainable Design
Website: circularocean.eu

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