At OceanEarth Foundation, we’re proud to be working towards Australia’s first fully circular product for the recreational fishing industry – a new type of crab pot float made from 100% recycled plastics. It’s an ambitious project that’s also teaching us some hard truths.
Traditional floats are made from expanded polystyrene. While they’re cheap and stay buoyant even when damaged, they’re also a major pollution issue, breaking down into microplastics and ending up in our waterways. Our new design replaces polystyrene with 100% recycled plastic, including 5% yabby trap netting collected through our Yabby Trap Round Up across NSW, SA and the ACT.
Alongside environmental benefits, the float has been designed with function in mind. It includes features to withstand croc bites, and a simple tie-off point that lets fishers adjust their rope length to match changing tides, helping prevent one of the most common causes of gear loss: vessels cutting through floating ropes. And when the float has served its purpose, instructions printed directly on the product will help ensure damaged floats are returned and recycled again.
We’ll be launching the float in July and expect to have it available on shelves for anglers before Christmas. We’re proud of how far we’ve come, but this journey hasn’t been without its challenges.
Circularity is often spoken about with a sense of idealism: turning waste into resource, closing loops, and designing for a regenerative future. But in practice, it is far more complex. Our work on this product, and our national end-of-life gear collection program, has made it clear that the path to circularity is anything but straightforward. Timelines stretch. Design gets complicated. And most significantly, the cost of collecting, transporting, cleaning, and reprocessing materials in Australia is simply no match for the low price of virgin plastic.
Despite strong intent and innovation, circular products struggle to compete unless we address the economic imbalance head-on. The missing link is policy.
If Australia wants a truly circular economy, government support is essential. That means developing policy tools that either subsidise circular efforts, offer meaningful incentives, or level the playing field by placing levies or taxes on virgin materials. Without these levers, the most well-designed circular initiatives will continue to hit financial walls.
Circularity isn’t just a design challenge—it’s a systems challenge. And we’re learning, step-by-step, what it will take to make it viable in Australia.