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The economy emerging from sea litter

How and why “Fishing for Litter” is a model to know

Riccardo Silvi
a story by
Riccardo Silvi
 
 
The economy emerging from sea litter

Ogyre, a benefit corporation and innovative startup, is Mangrovia’s “content partner” for the saltwater habitat. Through this collaboration, we present in this article a new socio-ecological development model linked to the sea and its health

Marcelo da Silva Fonseca has been a fisherman for 30 years. Every day, he heads out with his boat to Guanabara Bay in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, together with his dog. At high tide, he and his team reach the mangrove forests and begin their collection. Of plastic.

«It is sad to go out on the boat and see all that waste. But then when I come ashore with my load, I feel good, because I realise I have done something useful. That is why I carry on». Marcelo da Silva Fonseca is one of about 60 fishermen involved in the Ogyre1 project who go out to sea daily to collect waste and receive compensation for their efforts. This activity is part of the global “Fishing for Litter” network.

Marcelo da Silva Fonseca, 59, has lived in the fishing community of Guanabara Bay for 12 years. He enjoys playing cards and dominoes. He started fishing as a boy, watching the other fishermen. Over the years he has witnessed a decrease in the number of fish: he used to catch a lot of bass, but today he can hardly find them.

Faced with a pile of plastic in the sea, especially during the rainiest periods, da Silva Fonseca and the other fishermen collect the waste either by hand or with nets. A valuable job: «Plastic is ruining everything» he says. «Fish eat bits of it, get sick, and die. We fishermen find more and more plastic in our nets and fewer healthy fish. Unfortunately, today’s fish come across litter in their lives anyway, it makes little difference whether you catch them with plastic or not. Cleaning the sea, however, makes a difference. Fish that do not run into plastic, those would be fish that are worth a lot».

Clean seas, healthy fish, product value, improvement of the ecosystem, and the living standards of local communities. These are the elements that describe da Silva Fonseca’s life and his colleagues’, but they are also the components of a virtuous and concrete model of circular economy.

Some pictures of Ogyre fishermen in Brazil and Indonesia, working on waste collection. All rights reserved. Images reproduced with the consent of the authors.

The cost of a plastic-filled sea

Plastic waste makes up between 61% and 87% of all ocean waste2: heavier pieces sink, gradually releasing microplastics, while lighter pieces float and accumulate in the notorious “plastic islands”. In an ecosystem, everything is connected: plastic in the sea enters the food chain, from fish to our plates. 

Fishing has always been a bio-economic activity, both cause and effect of the interaction between biology and economy. The waste products of fishing activity are, in fact, among the first agents of pollution of the seas: fishing nets, buoys, and boat components (propellers, rudders, anchors) that are lost in the waters. At the same time, fishermen have always been “sentinels” of the sea, the first concerned with its health.

Marine litter negatively impacts fishing, reducing revenue or increasing costs.

The key question to understand how the circular economy model of litter fishing works is: how much is a fish with a stomach full of plastic worth?

Firstly, a product’s value starts with its production costs: fishing in a sea of waste is expensive in terms of both labour and materials used to repair or replace damaged equipment. The health of the sea therefore affects the amount of product available: a dirty sea means few fish. Microplastics, when they enter the marine food chain, can alter fish metabolism in at least two ways: they induce a false sense of satiety, leading to starvation, or they cause hormonal disorders due to the absorption of toxic substances, reducing marine fauna’s reproductive capacity3.

Another factor directly impacting the value of the catch in a polluted context is demand. The more people are aware of the impacts of microplastics on the food chain, the more demand tends to decrease. So does the value of fish.

A global issue that requires interdisciplinary and multifaceted solutions. One is precisely litter fishing.

The value of litter fishing

Understanding the mechanism of creating economic, social, and environmental value through waste fishing involves approaching a true circular economy model, which began about 25 years ago from an intuition and offers great future opportunities.

Particularly for developing coastal communities, where fishing is a primary source of income and employment and where they face a growing fish availability crisis.

The paradox is that in some contexts of the global south, fishermen earn more from waste fishing than from fish fishing.

“Fishing for Litter” began in 2000 as a programme by the environmental organisation KIMO4 in collaboration with the Dutch Fisheries Association to clean up the sea. In less than 30 years, the programme has expanded, launching collaborations and parallel projects worldwide. The mechanism is simple, confirming the value of the intuition: during their fishing activities, fishermen catch waste as a “by-product” which, instead of ending up back in the sea, is stored in sturdy bags and then disposed of on land through a supply chain that generates new direct and indirect economic value.

The waste brought ashore can be sold on the recovered materials market to produce new objects, a market today strongly driven by social demand.

If not sold, the waste is regularly disposed of without additional costs or procedures for the fishermen. It has been demonstrated5 that perceiving marine waste as a collective emergency influences people’s opinions and actions: this fosters the emergence of support projects for “Fishing for Litter” activities or social lobbying actions for establishing public support programmes for waste fishing. Over time, this has led to a paradigm shift in “Fishing for Litter” programmes: from waste fishing as a by-product to the collection of plastic and other marine pollutants as the primary activity of true “waste fishermen”.

The circular plastic fishing formula

Fishermen collect waste along with fish (or only waste), bring it ashore where they are remunerated either by the market or through social or public projects. The sea gradually becomes cleaner and the fish fauna grows in quantity and quality. Fishermen can then rely on a primary product (fish) with a higher perceived market value, hence more remunerative.

Researchers Linh Nguyen and Roy Brouwer, analysing this mechanism, theorised a true circular and sustainable economy formula for plastics6, presenting «a dynamic economic optimisation model in which the fishing sector maximises its utility over time as custodians of our oceans and seas».

The formula with which Nguyen and Brouwer demonstrate the correlation between investments in waste fishing and fishermen’s increased fish collection.

The Ogyre model

«Creating an economic system around marine waste collection means, first of all, inventing it from scratch and always being ready to challenge it. “Fishing for Litter” is a market where no new technology is directly linked to the fishing system that changes the existing model and makes it scalable in some way. There is only a shared will for a clean sea and awareness of doing something good».

Antonio Augeri is first and foremost a man of the sea, a surfer. Antonio Augeri is first and foremost a man of the sea, a surfer. Since 2020, he has also been the co-founder, with Andrea Faldella, of the startup Ogyre, active on three continents for the recovery and disposal of waste collected from the sea. From theory to practice, from economic formula to direct economy: Ogyre has mobilised over 400,000 euros towards the Global South in 4 years.

Antonio Augeri, 35, a management graduate, surfer and startupper. In 2016 he co-founded a clothing brand called “Sort of Looser”, later sold in 2019. Then, following his passion for the sea, he opened a surf school called “Roofless/Blackwave” until 2020 when he started the Ogyre project.

«It’s a project that arrives at “Fishing for Litter” but starts only from the desire to do something for the sea» Augeri explains. «I travelled the world looking for waves, and after being in Morocco, Western Sahara, I decided it was time to start a startup to protect the oceans. I met Andrea, and Ogyre came into being».

Initially, the Ogyre model focused on marketing clothing made from yarns recovered from collected plastic, but it quickly evolved into a platform connecting people, organisations, and especially businesses to the fishermen involved in the project through specific collection campaigns. «We work with companies that have decided to start transitioning their economic models» Augeri explains. «The line between this and greenwashing is very thin, so Ogyre seeks out entities that truly demonstrate a willingness to change their way of creating value».

The waste cycle in Ogyre is transparent and tracked: once fished, marine waste is weighed and uploaded to a specific platform before being delivered to the local waste manager for disposal and recycling. Without a universal standard for marine waste management and disposal, recycling rates vary depending on where Ogyre operates. In Brazil, about 25% of the waste is recycled, while in Indonesia, the rate is lower and varies, ranging from 2% to 3% to peaks of 10%.

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La boutique degli impact credit

Like any socio-ecological economic model7, Ogyre’s impact is not only economic but also social, particularly in emerging economic contexts.

Driven by the profitability guaranteed by waste collection, fishermen also become ambassadors of a new environmental sensitivity within their communities. «Recently, the fishing community working with us in Indonesia celebrated the return of crabs among the mangroves. It was huge feedback for us» Augeri highlights. «When you catch waste and throw it back into the sea, it eventually ends up back in the nets».

Those who participate in our programmes break this cycle and develop new sensitivity in waste management.

An emerging ecological culture confirmed by fisherman da Silva Fonseca: «It took some time, but now most people understand that collecting waste is the right thing to do. Especially children are curious and ask questions, and we are happy to explain why it’s important to keep the sea clean».

Ogyre’s future still lies in saltwater but with new perspectives. «The last time I was in Indonesia to meet our fishermen, I found myself face to face with the local government» Andrea Faldella recounts. «They came to thank us for what we were doing for that community. It was a great incentive to keep pushing and growing with our project. The dream is to become a boutique of impact credits, helping companies interested in the ecological transition».


  1. Their official website: https://www.ogyre.com/it ↩︎
  2. To examine the data, see Barboza, L. G. A., Cózar, A., Gimenez, B. C., Barros, T. L., Kershaw, P. J., & Guilhermino, L. (2019). Macroplastics pollution in the marine environment. In Elsevier eBooks (pp. 305–328). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978012805052100019X ↩︎
  3. For more on the effects of microplastics, see OSPAR (2009). Marine litter in the North-East Atlantic Region: Assessment and priorities for response. London, United Kingdom. https://qsr2010.ospar.org/media/assessments/p00386_Marine_Litter_in_the_North-East_Atlantic_with_addendum.pdf ↩︎
  4. On “Fishing for litter” and the KIMO association, see their official website: https://www.kimointernational.org/fishing-for-litter/ ↩︎
  5. On the perception of marine litter, see Forleo, M., & Romagnoli, L. (2023). Fishing for litter for the reduction of marine plastic debris: What benefits and costs do Italians perceive? Marine Pollution Bulletin192, 115018. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X23004502 ↩︎
  6. For more on their studies, see Nguyen, L., & Brouwer, R. (2022). Fishing for Litter: Creating an Economic Market for Marine Plastics in a Sustainable Fisheries Model. Frontiers in Marine Science9, 722815. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.722815/full#B3 ↩︎
  7. To find out what the socio-ecological economy entails, see https://mangrovia.info/come-il-carbonio-blu-guida-i-business-socio-ecologici/ ↩︎

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