Recycling ‘ghost’ fishing nets.

Every year, around 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is lost or discarded in our seas and oceans (source: Al Jazeera - Earth Rise, “Fish Net Fashion”, May 2015). The gear traps, injures, mutilates and even kills hundreds of thousands of sea animals. Abandoned fish nets, known as ‘ghost nets’, are usually lost in storms, snagged on reefs or even tangled when boats operate in crowded waters.

The Healthy Seas Initiative retrieves these nets and give them a second life. They work with local fishermen to retrieve the nets and instead of just sending them to a landfill, they partner with a textiles company who use them to produce a recycled nylon called ECONYL®.

This video captures the process if you would like to see more:

From waste to fabric – the technical bit! 

Our fabric partner, ECONYL® has developed an innovative and sustainable regeneration system. The yarn is made from regenerated Nylon 6 waste that is collected all over the world and sent to the ECONYL® waste treatment centre. The cleaned nylon waste is shredded, compacted, bagged and transported to The ECONYL® Depolymerization Plant, where it goes through a radically new purification process. It then goes through the ECONYL® Polymerization Plant, where polymerization transforms the regenerated raw material into Nylon 6 polymers. The Nylon 6 Polymers are then transformed into textile yarn. The ECONYL® yarn can be regenerated over and over for an infinite number of times without any loss in quality.

This recycled fabric costs a little more to produce, but when we tested it for its UV protection capabilities, coolness comfort and stretch, we were convinced it was perfect for Crazy Arms.

Helping clean up the oceans.

As well as using only recycled fabrics and packaging, the Crazy Arms team are keen to help the organisations undertaking this vital work. That’s why for every pair of ‘Dolphin’ Crazy Arms purchased, we are donating $2.50 to healthyseas.org.