Questão de Inglês — Preposições (Prepositions) — FUNDATEC 2025

A One-Man Recycling Revolution on The Cornish Coast

By Rupert Neate

Ian Falconer kept thinking          the heaps of discarded plastic fishing nets he saw at Newlyn harbour near his home          Cornwall, England. Falconer, 52, who studied environmental and mining geology          university, came up with a plan: shredding and cleaning the worn-out nets, melting the plastic down, and converting it          filament to be used in 3D printing. He then built a “micro-factory” so that the filament could be made into useful stuff. “Every year, up to 1 million tonnes of fishing nets are discarded,” he says. “Most of that ends up in landfill or is burned, or worse still, finds its way back into the oceans. This showed there was another way for some of that material”.

The first big challenge he encountered when he started in 2016 was getting hold of the nets.

But he badgered the Newlyn harbour master into giving him a few to test his theory in his kitchen.

Since its launch the following year, Falconer’s company OrCA has raised more than £1m from small investors in over 40 countries. The investment funded the development of patented new machinery that can convert more than 20 kilos of nylon fishing nets an hour. He claims the recycling process has less than 3% of the carbon impact of producing new nylon.

The nets that go into the shredder come out as small blue-green beads that Falconer sells to 3D printing companies, which convert them into strings of filament used in 3D printing. They also get sold around the world to replace new plastic in more conventional products that are made using injection moulding. Falconer’s shipping container office is full of items made from the raw material: sunglasses, light shades, bottle openers, razor blade handles. It can be used for just about anything. The items he is most proud of are those made from his nylon mixed with waste carbon fibre – mostly from offcuts of car and aeroplane manufacturing. This stronger and more expensive product is used to make parts for racing bikes and super-light sunglasses, and industrial components such as electronic enclosures.

Falconer could make a nice living continuing to recycle Newlyn fishers’ nets, but he has wider ambitions. “Waste fishing nets are a problem here in Cornwall, but the same type of nets are a much bigger problem in other countries, especially those without established waste systems,” he says. “Around Africa, South and Central America, and Asia, you see these nets littering beaches”. To try to combat the problem, Falconer plans on exporting his recycling solution to any harbour that wants it. A container with all the equipment needed to run a mini recycling plant would cost about $500,000 (£370,000) if built in the UK. Falconer says he has already received inquiries from 14 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, South Africa, and Vietnam. “The beauty of it is that it all fits in a shipping container and pretty much anyone can operate it,” he says. “So you could have one of these at every harbour around the world, converting a costly and hazardous waste into a profitable raw material”.

(Available at: www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/fishing-nets-money-a-one

-man-recycling-revolution-on-the-cornish-coast – text specially adapted for this test).