This Community in the Philippines Converts Plastic Fishing Nets to Carpet | National Geographic

When we first came here, the fish were so depleted because the fishing methods have become more destructive. You could go along a coral reef for ten minutes and hardly see a fish. As a marine biologist, I quickly realized that I really wanted to do something that was going to make a difference. We know that if these areas are properly protected, if they are looked after by the community, then we see recovering and protection of the ocean.

We're on the Denying Bank, one of six double barrier reefs in the world. It's globally significant, this place from a marine biodiversity point of view.

Plastic is not meant to be in the ocean at all, and it does no good to anything. Plastic has been found in every single bit of the ocean that people have looked. What we have been working on is how do we solve marine conservation in poor fishing communities like we find here in this part of the Philippines.

If you're worried about where your next meal is coming from, how you're going to pay for your child to go to school, how you're going to treat a parent who's sick, your needs are absolutely immediate. And that's the balance that we've been struggling to find.

Many of our team are also community organizers, people who can talk to people. I couldn't stand here and talk to the community about science, but without understanding what's going on for these communities, what their daily concerns and pressures are, then we can't come up with solutions.

We knew there were a lot of fishing nets on the island. You can see them lying around, entangled in the mangroves, lying on the beaches. More and more nets are being used as there's less and less fish, and people are more and more desperate. They're trying to find those fish, and they need more nets to do so. From busy young mouths, I see them much more alone, so we have within our pocket, and no matter the lungs, additional income.

We were able to develop a global supply chain to collect nets, aggregate nets, bail nets, export nets from the Philippines to Europe, recycle those nets to nylon yarn that then can be made into carpet.

So, working with Matt's networks, regional manager, there's been really one of the brainchilds. We've worked together almost 20 years. The first generation of nets that we collected used to be very dirty because people were collecting nets that had been on the shoreline for years. But here we are collecting them straight from the areas where they replace and amend the nets.

This is just a proof that we are effective because fishers are no longer throwing their used fishing nets into the fishing ground. Just from this one island, we've had 18 tons of nets, and so we can make a difference. There is hope, there is optimism, and there are solutions, but we need innovation and collaboration to do that.

What is so inspiring for me is actually seeing what communities who have so very little can actually do and how much change they can make.

The other represents in science behind this thing. People can easily buy into something that's supported with strong science.

From a small island in the Philippines, we're part of a solution that works: economically, it works environmentally, it works for the people who live here. All of these things are making a difference every day to people's lives. We are very convinced that the tool that we have developed, that we have evolved, is highly applicable to solve other plastics issues.