Based in California, Bureo transforms used fishing nets into a raw material. Recycled into NetPlus®, this traceable 100% post-consumer material is used by Patagonia in its clothing. Here, Bureo's creators explain how they prevent some of the 600,000 tonnes of fishing nets they use every year from ending up in the marine environment.
In one of our last articles, we talked about how Patagonia used NetPlus recycled nylon produced by Bureo. Made from unusable fishing nets recovered from fishing communities in South America, this recycled nylon represents a responsible alternative to virgin plastics. These plastics are still essential to the manufacture of durable, high-performance clothing. But to produce materials like polyester, the garment industry requires huge amounts of fossil fuels.
In the film "The Monster In Our Closet" (unveiled below in full), we discover, through the eyes of lawyer Maxine Bédat (a reference in eco-responsible fashion), environmental journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis and Patagonia designer Pasha Whitmire, the dangerous links between the clothing industry and the oil and gas industry. Beyond the facts, this production highlights what we can all do on an individual, commercial and governmental level.
With the used fishing nets it collects in South America, Bureo is also contributing to the essential changes our planet needs. Its action prevents hundreds of tonnes of discarded nets from ending up in the ocean every year. A system that also enables Bureo to provide additional income for coastal communities. To find out more, we met Bureo's creators, Kevin Ahearn and David Stover.
Kevin and David, could you briefly introduce yourselves and explain how you came up with the idea for Bureo?
Kevin Ahearn: I'm Kevin Ahearn, and I'm one of the co-founders of Bureo. I grew up in a small town called East Hampton or Montauk, on the tip of Long Island. So I lived very close to the ocean from an early age. My father was a surfer, and he helped open the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to preserve the oceans. He taught me early on that it was important to protect the places we love.
The three of us, the founders, studied mechanical engineering at university. Our paths diverged when we entered the job market. We found ourselves in Australia by chance. David had moved there, and I was traveling with my brother. We were all traveling the world to surf, and we noticed plastic pollution everywhere we went. So it was our shared passion for the ocean that brought us together.
David Stover: Kevin and I went to the same engineering school, and I too grew up in the northwest of the United States. I left at 18 to live in California, Australia and Chile. I settled here in Ventura County about five years ago.
At Bureo, all three of us are involved in the recycling program. In terms of business development, Kevin and I work with our partners to integrate materials. We identify the product categories they are interested in and then plan the materials. We all move forward together on most projects, then divide up the tasks with Ben working on the Sustainable Development side, Kevin in Engineering, and me in Finance.
The problem of plastic pollution is all around us, but fishing nets aren't usually the most visible when you look at the ocean. How did you come up with the idea, and why fishing nets?
K: When we started out, we had several ideas in mind. We hadn't yet worked out exactly what we wanted to do, but the basic concept was: take plastic, collect it from beaches, recycle it, turn it into a product and sell it to create positive or shared commercial value. Sales of this product could then be used to strengthen collection and product development.
While we were thinking about it, we left Australia and went to Chile to work on a government project to promote sustainable development in various sectors. One of these sectors was fishing, so we were able to look at all the waste streams generated by the fishing industry in general. We then identified a major problem in the nylon-based fishing nets these companies were all generating, and thought this might be a good opportunity for us to get involved.
One of the difficulties associated with the random collection of plastic on beaches is that it's different every time, and there are different components. This plastic has been in the environment for different periods of time, which means that it's very difficult to make it reproducible and turn it into a high-performance product, which is what we wanted to do. The opportunity with fishing nets lies in the fact that they are generally made from few different materials and are fairly similar on all continents. Nylon collected in North America will be virtually identical to that collected in Asia or South America. This makes it a truly clean and pure raw material. At the same time, we were talking to associations in our network, who identified fishing nets as one of the most harmful forms of moving plastic, particularly for marine ecosystems. So everything came together for the project.
D: Above all, we wanted to go where we would have the greatest impact, so that was a key element. Fishing nets are a material that few people are looking for these days. A report a few years ago showed that 1.3 million new nets are made every year, and according to the latest estimates from the voluntary sector, up to 600,000 tonnes of them are likely to reach the marine environment every year. So there's a lot of material piling up, and there's new material every year, and we need to remind people that this isn't a one-off clean-up, and when it's over, we'll have a beer and retire. It's a recurring problem for which we're trying to establish a waste recovery model.
So from this problem of thousands of tons of fishing nets, how does the process work to make, first, a skateboard, and then all the other products?
K: It all started in the field, in fishing ports in Chile, with us explaining our project and asking for access to the old nets lying around. It was very small, with the three of us scraping, cleaning and sorting the nets, before taking them back to the recycling subcontractor to transform them into granules. Once granulated, we could use them for injection molding. We wanted to make something fun and interesting that would stimulate us, and at the time it was a little plastic skateboard.
While we were spending more time in the field with fishing companies, we realized pretty quickly that as a niche business, we could never reach a scale that could really have an impact on the amount of waste generated. So with Patagonia's support, we changed our model from a product brand to a raw material supplier. The relationship with Patagonia enabled us to scale up our operations to much larger volumes. We first launched on the cap visor, which went on sale in 2020, but what we really saw was the opportunity to replace nylon, a material much used by Patagonia. We worked with the materials development team for several years, culminating in the launch of several products. The outdoor sector is a huge market, and the amount of nylon fabric and textile used is staggering, so it's always been a great opportunity to grow and strengthen our impact.
D: At the moment, we're continuing to train and collect fishing nets from local communities in South America. This is our main activity. We get asked all the time, "When are you going to build your own fabric mill or spinning mill?" We don't think the world needs another fabric manufacturer. We think the world needs more solutions to prevent waste from ending up in the ocean. That's what drives our mission: to transpose this model to other coasts and ports that need to dispose of waste.
Sounds like you're doing a great job! You want to work with more and more brands, and be really transparent about your end-to-end process. How do you see the material evolving as more and more brands consider recycled rather than virgin raw materials?
D: A lot of people try to force a recycled source into products, but over the last few years, with Patagonia's advice, we've looked at areas where nylon is absolutely necessary. For example, Futures Fins, our surfing partner who uses nylon, relies on its technical properties for a surf daggerboard, which makes sense from an engineering point of view. With fishing nets for Patagonia, it's the high-performance technical fabrics that need to be durable. You have to withstand the elements, which is why we see so many opportunities in the outdoor space. They all depend on nylon because there aren't many substitutes, unlike single-use plastics, for which more degradable alternatives can be found.
How did the relationship with Patagonia and Tin Shed Ventures guide you to become a member of B Corp and to be part of 1% For the Planet?
D: We didn't even know what B Corp or 1% For the Planet stood for when we started in 2013. I remember getting an email from someone on the Patagonia product team, who had seen something about skateboarding. The Tin Shed team then asked us to come and talk about our business model, and shortly before the meeting ended, we talked about B Corp certification and 1PFTP. 1% is pretty straightforward. We already understood that we were eligible because we made donations. At the time, we had a project with Save the Waves and another local association in Chile. So 1% was just a formality.
B Corp was a much more interesting process, since at the time we had very little income and were a very small company. It helped us a lot that Patagonia had this requirement, because we didn't know what it was, and we didn't know anything about certification. Answering the questionnaire and doing the exercises allows you to ask yourself the right questions about your company. We implemented it on the fly, so we were able to take into account things like fair working conditions and decent wages right from the start.
You said you've been donating since the beginning. What projects are you currently involved in, and are they only in South America or also in California or elsewhere in the world?
D: We always have partner organizations that we donate to here in the States. Last year it was Save the Waves, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii. We also make smaller donations to organizations that spread the word and promote the activism we support, like the Surfrider Foundation.
For all the nets we collect, we pledge a donation per kilo, then work with the fishing companies and the community to link them up with an association, and this has mostly been one-off activities such as composting and recycling education. This year, we undertook a collective development project with a small fishing company in Peru. The company didn't know what kind of infrastructure it needed, and we helped by commissioning a consulting study.
In the future, we'd like to direct more funding towards associations and fishing companies working to protect and restore our coasts. We are very interested in mangroves and coastal development projects that will also benefit the climate.
How often do you travel to South America, and what is the work like there?
K: In 2021, I spent a total of four months there, while Ben lives there full-time with his wife. We hire locals in the communities we work with, as it's the best opportunity for them to really get involved with the fishermen, and the fact that they come from the community is an obvious added value. We've set up community workshops with the fishing companies, and we make them aware of the impact of discarding nets in the environment. When they reach a large quantity of collected nets, they know they can call us and we'll send a truck to collect them. We have teams of trained workers who collect these nets, cut them into smaller, manageable pieces, and remove foreign debris. These nets then undergo an industrial washing process, followed by industrial decomposition. In short, the huge quantity of useless waste represented by the nets is transformed into a usable raw material that is exported directly to the recycler.
D: There's no magic machine that can take the fillets and identify anything that might be useful, so it's still a very manual, physical work process. There's a team of 16 to 20 people who process two or three tons a day. We see what we've built in Chile as a good example of what could be done in Peru, Mexico and Ecuador. These are the next regions where we plan to implement a more established model.
Where do you see Bureo developing, and what are your plans for the coming years?
K: For us, the next few years are all about expansion. We've spent the last eight years finding our model and making it a reality, moving from research and development to where we are today. Last year, we recovered over 700 tonnes of fishing nets for processing on our premises, which represents around 65 12-metre containers of exported material - a major milestone for us. Marketing the product via the Patagonia supply chain has taken us a step further, and we're looking to increase our impact and expand geographically. This mainly means moving into new communities like Peru. We started in South America, but we're also developing programs in Ecuador, Mexico and the United States. Our aim is to increase the quantity from 700 tonnes a year to almost 2,000.
D: We've had enough indicators with the launch of Patagonia products and other partners, to know that what we're doing adds value to the environment and that people want this material. There's also an influence on the fishing industry, governments, and society, in terms of the end use of the material. We're looking at the carbon footprint we'll be able to capture, and we think we're going to have a measurable impact on the amount of material or prevention. The longer-term legacy of this approach is that we could be part of the movement to influence the way plastics are used in general, including fishing nets, and create more sustainable models.
Looks like you have a lot of work to do!
K: Yes, one of the questions we're often asked is "what will you do when you run out of fishing nets?", and we always laugh and reply that we'll celebrate, but unfortunately, the reality is that this material is constantly being used by the fishing industry for want of a viable alternative at the moment. Billions of people depend on fish as their main source of protein, so the fishing industry will continue to fish. Plastic-based fishing nets are the most economical and sustainable solution. So as long as we continue to produce this waste, we'll have to expand our operations to collect it.
D: I think one of the most enjoyable aspects of our partnership with Patagonia is looking at the responsibilities and having a partner willing to let us build them into our business model. Even for expansion, if we weren't so fussy, or if we left out the labor or safety data and other protocols, we could recycle a lot more and a lot faster. But for us, it's more important to recruit locally, train and educate employees, and make it a sustainable process.
If this party finally happens, let us know!
K: Yes, absolutely! On a day-to-day basis, we don't often take the time to look back at what we've achieved over the last few years. We're pretty proud of what we've done and the growth we've experienced so far. What excites us most is the opportunity we have to continue expanding the program. But at the same time, we're well aware that the problem with the environment isn't going to be solved by simply recycling fishing nets. It's our little niche solution to a very specific problem, but we hope that by looking differently at our sources of waste, we can create shared-value businesses, B-Corps, and other businesses that really help solve some of these problems. And if we inspire the next generation, or give someone else the idea to look at fishing nets or other sources of waste, that's a win for us.
D: As surfers, we have a different view of the ocean and its problems. We know the Surfers against Sewage team in the UK, and the work they do on water quality and plastic pollution. We mentioned Sustainable Coastlines in Hawaii, Surfrider Foundation and Save the Waves. There's a lot of activism in the surfing community, which is very sensitive to all these issues. We see a lot of people putting their passion and skills into this work. When someone is really passionate about the ocean, whether they're bodysurfing or surfing, they're bound to want to protect it.
Find out more about Bureo here.
