June 10, 2026 — As a fisheries observer in Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Akutan, Alaska, Nicole Baker saw piles of fishing nets that were no longer usable everywhere. She knew there had to be a sustainable way to dispose of old fishing gear. After some research, she connected with a company that recycled maritime materials, and Net Your Problem was born. “The business was born basically just to connect those dots of taking material that I knew existed from my career as an observer and then sending it to a final disposal destination,” she said.
Today Net Your Problem provides fishers with a way to recycle old nets. The organization establishes programs to dispose of waste in remote fishing communities and currently operates in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Maine, and Massachusetts. “If it’s something that can be recycled, it should have another life. It shouldn’t just have its life as a net and then never be useful again,” Baker said.
Since Baker launched the company in 2018, she has helped recycle over two million pounds of fishing gear plastics. Fishing gear gets recycled into recognizable products like phone cases, credit card readers, buckets, kayaks, and office furniture.
Net Your Problem spread its wings in Maritime Blue’s Maritime Accelerator inaugural cohort in 2020, designed to help maritime companies innovate and grow.