DP World Partners to Turn Recovered Fishing Nets Into Sunglasses
DP World is working with Deniz Yaşamını Koruma Derneği, Türkiye’s Marine Life Conservation Society, on a project targeting more than 1,000 square metres of abandoned fishing nets around the Princes’ Islands. The company puts the weight at approximately 800 kilograms.
Recovered nets will be converted into plastic granules for sunglasses, with the recovery coordinates and depth marked inside the frames. Some nets have been retrieved from depths exceeding 50 metres, including one at 55 metres.
The company is also partnering with SUSAKO, the Sustainable Art Women’s Cooperative, on public workshops using recovered plastic to make jewellery. The initiative includes engagement with fishing communities to help prevent further gear losses.
These figures describe the project’s recovery target rather than a confirmed final collection total. Its announcement does not specify a production volume, retail price, or launch schedule for the sunglasses.
Why Abandoned Fishing Gear Matters
Fishing nets can continue catching animals after their owners lose control of them. Known as ghost fishing, this creates an environmental problem that persists beyond the original fishing operation.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) identifies damage to fish stocks, potential harm to endangered species, and impacts on seabed environments among the consequences of abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear. It also highlights navigation and safety hazards.
Removing nets can therefore serve a conservation purpose before any recovered plastic reaches a factory. Evaluating that benefit requires attention to where gear is located and the risks it presents, alongside the amount collected.
For project reporting, this suggests that kilograms recovered should be accompanied by information about the recovery sites and ecological conditions. A small collection from a sensitive habitat could have significance that a weight-based measure alone would fail to explain.
Building on Earlier Recycling Work
The conservation society has previously documented the use of recovered Marmara fishing nets in eyewear manufacturing. In March 2025, it reported a project with Billur Optik using 1,500 square metres of nets collected over the preceding two years.
According to that account, the nets were cleaned and converted into granules before being taken to a production facility in İkitelli for moulding into sunglasses frames. Manufacturing had begun earlier that month.
That earlier activity provides local context for the latest partnership. However, the 2025 collection figure belongs to the earlier project and should be reported separately from DP World’s current recovery target. The latest company announcement does not name Billur Optik as its manufacturing partner.
For manufacturers considering similar products, the distinction matters: an established recycling example demonstrates a possible production route, while each new partnership still needs its own evidence on material supply, processing, and finished products.
Turning Marine Waste Into Usable Material
Recovering plastic from the sea is only one stage of recycling. The FAO report "Fishing Gear Recycling Technologies and Practices", available through the International Maritime Organization, identifies contamination and mixtures of different materials as significant barriers.
Retrieved gear may require manual removal of sediment, organic matter, and entangled waste. Preparation can involve sorting, disassembly, cleaning and size reduction before further processing. The report also explains that gear collected at the end of its working life is generally easier to recycle than material recovered after being lost at sea.
For buyers, this makes the usable material yield an important question. The weight brought ashore cannot automatically be treated as the weight incorporated into new products.
Useful disclosures would include the proportion of recovered plastic in each frame, processing losses, and the destination of unsuitable material. Recovery coordinates can communicate provenance, but supporting records would be needed to connect collection batches with finished products.
Assessing Climate Benefits and Long-Term Value
The announcement provides no quantified greenhouse gas savings or product life-cycle assessment. Any climate benefit would need to be evaluated across recovery, transport, cleaning, processing, and manufacturing, with a clear comparison against the material being replaced.
For sustainability teams, that means treating marine conservation, recycled material use and emissions performance as separate measures. Evidence of net removal supports a litter-recovery claim, but a carbon claim requires additional calculation.
Product durability and arrangements for repair or eventual disposal would also help establish whether the recovered material remains useful over time. These are practical assessment questions rather than outcomes demonstrated by the announcement.
Prevention remains another part of the response. FAO identifies international cooperation as essential to addressing lost gear and notes that its Committee on Fisheries endorsed voluntary fishing gear marking guidelines in 2018.
For ports, fishing operators and recycling businesses, the broader opportunity is to connect recovery projects with reliable collection and processing arrangements. Reporting both environmental results and material flows would help stakeholders judge whether this partnership offers a model that can be repeated.
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