Net Your Problem
Nicole Baker

Dutch Harbor is located in the Aleutian islands, which reach out in an arc into the Bering sea in the north Pacific west of Alaska. It is the home of a fishing industry, which harvests over a billion dollars worth of fish each year.

Nicole Baker was walking the docks in Dutch Harbor, when she got into a conversation with a fishermen

Her job as government fish scientist was to monitor fish stocks to ensure that the industry could have a sustainable future.

The conversation she had with the fishermen was about the problem he was having disposing of the fishing nets that had reached the end of their useful life.

Now, if we're going to live with plastic, we need to get better at collecting it and getting it to the recycler.

The recycling rate worldwide is about 8% This is something that we're not very good at. but it's not entirely our fault.

Recycling is either not available or getting it to the recycler is complicated. Think, for example, that time when you tried to get that Tetra Pak back to the recycling.

When it comes to fishing gear made of synthetic materials, well, the options are very limited

After the conversation with the fisherman, Nicole decided to be in the business of collecting fishing nets and bringing them to the recycler.

I sat down with Nicole and talked with her about her business "Net Your Problem".

Full transcript.