Experts believe that lost and discarded fishing-related gear is the most treacherous form of marine plastic, persisting in the marine environment for hundreds of years, continuing to catch fish and causing entanglement of marine wildlife, including birds and mammals. This is an important issue in the Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) region, where many remote communities are subject to the consequences of waste marine plastics that are already damaging local fishing industries, tourism and other ocean related businesses. There are many terms to describe fishing nets that are discarded into the ocean and/or end up in landfill including: marine litter; abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG); ‘ghost nets’; and ‘ghost gear’. The Circular Ocean project uses the term FNRCs to describe discarded, used and/or waste fishing nets, ropes and components.

The Circular Ocean Innovation Competition 2018 will help address this problem, by seeking the submission of new product concepts that utilise plastics from discarded and used fishing nets, ropes and components (FNRCs). The Competition will also look to attract new ideas that enable a circular value chain related to FNRCs through innovative material processing, technology, local machinery, systems, business models – or completely different solutions that enable the collection, reusing and recycling of discarded and used FNRCs. The Competition aims to stimulate product and process solutions to the existing problem of waste FNRCs but is not aimed to develop new policy solutions to prevent the problem. The Circular Ocean Innovation Competition is aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 9 “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”, Goal 12 on “Responsible Consumption and Production” and Goal 14 “Life Below Water.” The Competition is proudly supported by Global Ghost Gear Initiative and Zero Waste Scotland.