On July 30, 2014, a container with 9 tons of nets arrived in Ajdovscina, Slovenia from the Philippines. It was a long journey for these monofilament nets that were recovered by local villagers participating in the Net-Works™ project. Net-Works is a community-based initiative established by Interface and the Zoological Society of London to recover nets from fishing villages in impoverished regions.
After the first truck of the year arrived in Europe, the nets were cleaned and prepared, ready to end in our ECONYL® Regeneration Plant in Ljubljana.
After breaking the seals on the containers, the nets were unloaded and inspected. They were very clean and almost immediately ready to be sent through the regeneration process. Samples were taken so the materials could be more closely analyzed at the chemical lab in Ljubljana.
The next day, the nets were taken to the regeneration plant in Ljubljana to be recycled through the depolymerization process.
The nets were put in a machine to be melted and depolymerized. From these nets, together with other waste material, ECONYL® regenerated yarn will be produced and sent to Interface for their beautiful new collection Human Nature.
It was exciting to see the effort from the people of the Philippines to clean their beaches and seas, knowing that these will be given a new life to become a new product that takes its inspiration from the resilience of human nature.