Anglers urged to support new line recycling scheme

Angling Times is urging all anglers to get behind a national recycling scheme to help rid our inland fisheries and coastlines of unwanted fishing line. 

Each year an estimated 400 million metres of line is either discarded or lost across the UK - enough line to reach the moon.

Now the Anglers National Line Recycling Scheme is leading the fight to dramatically reduce that alarming statistic.

The incredible campaign first started in 2016 when a passionate group of Sussex sea anglers known as LISA (Local Independent Sea Anglers) introduced line recycling bins into local tackle shops.

Two years on and the scheme has grown – LISA has partnered with the Global Ghost Gear Initiative to create a stronger awareness. But it still needs your help to really make a difference. 

Angling Times spoke to scheme volunteer Viv Shears to find out more about its advancement and how we can help contribute as a nation of anglers.

Viv said: “After lots of work over the past year, all on a voluntary basis, the scheme is now moving quickly and 84 shops have now signed up – including Fosters, Angling Direct and Fishing Republic.

“We’ve also had great interest from the tackle manufacturers who attended this year’s The Big One Show, which was fantastic.

“However, with more than a million anglers across the country our main challenge is reaching out to them, as this is an issue that can be resolved with their help. 

“We’ve already had a positive response from anglers to line recycling from a survey we ran.

“Their reaction has made us realise that this could be a hugely positive scheme, not just for the sport, but for the environment too. For example, we collected line over a three-month period from eight Sussex tackle shops recently and it equated to 81 miles or 130,000 metres of line that’s no longer being used…

“Our next step is to increase national awareness of the scheme to all disciplines, and make it easy for anglers to send their line to us. 

“We have set up a formal and traceable recycling route for fishing line, rather than see it being dumped in landfill or even incinerated – which is environmentally unacceptable.”

Besides reaching out to anglers and tackle shops, ANLRS is urging fishery owners to provide their own recycling bins. 

Oxfordshire’s Linear Fisheries has already made a significant contribution to the cause and helped fund bin stickers and posters.

The fishery’s manager, Chris Blunt, said: “The scheme is incredibly important, as fishing line is dangerous to wildlife and the surrounding environment. 

“Anglers need to be seen to do the right thing – everyone recycles nowadays and it shouldn’t be any different for the angling community, which is why at Linear we have decided to help fund the scheme. 

“We’re now in the process of putting the new line recycling bins up around the fishery. These will be different from the rubbish bins. 

“Hopefully, anglers who fish here will make good use of them and discard any old line they no longer use.”

How the scheme works

In order for anglers to buy into the scheme it needs to be easy for them to get their waste line to a recycling point. The ANLRS scheme hopes to achieve this in a number of ways:

Posted returns – Anglers put their line into a pre-printed envelope and send it to LISA.

Recycling bins – These are placed into tackle shops where anglers can deposit waste line.

Recycling points – These are located at fishing venues so anglers can deposit line during a fishing session.