Oyster farmers use heavy-duty plastic bags to grow bivalves, but once the material starts to break down it’s tossed in the trash. A pair of Mainers are working to change that by developing a new method of recycling plastics like those found in the bags and other shellfish equipment. James Rutter, who works as Fab Lab and technology director at Deer Isle’s Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Dana Morse, a senior extension program manager at Maine Sea Grant, have set out to build specialized equipment to break the bags down into tiny pellets that can be morphed into a new shapes to give them new purpose.
The aquaculture and fishing industries are heavily dependent on plastics. The goal of the pilot project is to squeeze more life out of the materials that already exist to cut down on waste. “The best plastic out there is the one we don’t have to produce,” Morse said. “Part of that is getting more useful life out of the plastics we do have.”
Rutter and Morse got funding for the project in the fall of 2021 from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and are currently working on designs for the recycling equipment. The machines they’re devising will shred the oyster bag material. Coming full circle, the materials generated in that process will then be used to create a device that helps with the oyster shucking process.