Surfboards are made with fishing nets to take plastic from the sea

A project from an indigenous village in southern India has drawn international press attention for innovation and sustainability. Local fishermen are working to properly dispose of plastic fishing nets that are immensely harmful to ocean life, turning them into surfboards.

The initiative is the result of a partnership between DSM, focused on nutrition and healthy living, and Thai water sports company Starboard. DSM Chief Operating Officer Uday Shetty explains that they remove discarded fishing nets from the ocean, clean them and pellet them.

"These granules arrive here at our site, where we do all the rigorous quality checks, produce high quality hardware with strict process parameters, and make it suitable for application. Such as environmentally friendly surfboards." "explains Shetty.

When the sun rises over the horizon in the Indian village of Kuthenkuly, Jesuraja and his fellow fishermen prepare for a new day at sea. But they are not looking for fish - they are searching for abandoned fishing nets floating in the Indian Ocean to recycle into surfboards pic.twitter.com/hZfNOcWyq0

- Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 6, 2019

Known as "ghost nets", nylon plastic nets degrade into microplastics that are eaten by fish and enter the food chain, harming the entire environment.

"We look beyond the current model of the catch-and-throw society and try to mimic the nature and life cycle, " Matt Gray, commercial director of DSM Engineering Plastics, said in the press release. By turning the nets into fins, fin boxes, SUP pumps and other surfboard parts, the nets can return to the ocean in a much more environmentally conscious way.

The benefits of the initiative are not restricted to the ocean, as villagers in the region now have more job opportunities.