Lobster Pot Luck

In D&G Climate Hub’s launched its ‘Lobster Pot Luck’ initiative to create a hyperlocal circular economy of lobster creel plastics.

While fragile plastics that we all use, such as drinks bottles, disintegrate into microplastics out of sight, creel parts and larger fishing gear washes up on the shore, often intact and highly visible. As a result, fishers are often blamed for the state of our beaches. They argue that losing gear is unfortunate for them too but is inevitable, especially with increasingly frequent storms.

There is stellar work going on with various volunteer beach cleaning groups along the Solway Coast. We noted that the current disposal / repurposing method for plastics collected by beach cleaning groups is burning at the Ecodeco plant in Dumfries. These creel parts are being collected and sent off with all the rubbish, when they could be reused.

Lobster Pot Luck: A Glossary of Creel Plastics, helps beach cleaners identify the creel parts, and shows their names and what function they perform on the creel, and provides the contact details of all the harbour masters along the Scottish Solway coast who have agreed to receive the found creel parts and inform fishers. It is available to download here.

In a very small but meaningful way this initiative engages fishers and harbour masters with climate action, keeps plastics out of the ocean, decreases the amount of new plastics being used, and hopefully helps beach cleaners and fishers understand each others’ realities a little better.

The glossary was launched at a day of ocean plastic exploration at South Machars Community Centre, featuring talks from Nic Coombey of Solway Firth Partnership, and fifth generation fisherman John McGuire who told us about his livelihood and the history of creel making, as well as cooking up a crab and lobster feast. We also explored ocean plastic through creative workshops with EcoArt’s Rose Petal Hall and Waste Stories’ Anna Wilson.

Building on the success of Lobster Pot Luck, D&G Climate Hub held another event in early 2025 that shared the incredibly inspiring Flipflopi Project in Kenya.  The Flipflopi team built the world’s first ocean going sailing dhow entirely out of recycled plastic.