Words by Grace West

Bureo’s story didn’t begin in a boardroom or lab—it began in the water. After a few shared surf sessions near Santiago, Chile, Kevin Ahern and David Stover embarked on a mission to not only rid coastlines of the harmful plastics piling up at local breaks but change sustainability in the outdoor fashion world in the process. What started as a dream, eventually became a company that redefined how brands approach material sourcing, turning fishing nets into viable products that not only built better gear, but saved the places they loved in the process. 

Ahern and Stover's paths crossed as classmates in a freshman year engineering class at Lehigh University. Both surfers from the Northeast, their shared love for the ocean stemmed from a mutual draw to surfing. After college, Stover relocated to Sydney, Australia, where he met Ben Kneppers, a surfer alike who grew up on the southern coast of Massachusetts. Shortly after, Ahern set out on an extended surf trip through Australia, and Stover and Kneppers met him on the road. This Australian rendezvous sparked a lengthy debate on the sustainability of oceanic environments and how to keep it clean and protected. Little did they know, but they’d planted the seeds for Bureo in the middle of that surfari.

“We hadn't really nailed down exactly what it was, but the concept was like this: what if we could take plastic, collect it along the beaches, recycle it, turn it into a product to then sell and create a positive or shared value business?” Says Ahern. “The sales of the product would then go towards further collection and product development.”

The trio then headed to Chile, working on sustainability projects for numerous commercial industries. It was there that they found the many waste streams coming out of the fishing industry, specifically in nylon-based fishing nets generated by these fisheries.

Fishing nets are one of the most harmful forms of ocean plastic pollution. When left or lost at sea, they can entangle marine animals, hurt coral and seabed habitats, and eventually break into harmful microplastics. A recent report found that 1.3 million tons of new nets are introduced into the environment every year. The latest estimates of the nonprofit sector show that up to 600,000 tons of that can enter the marine environment. For the three founders of Bureo, they’d found a problem. Now they had to find a solution.

“There's a lot of material accumulating and we're introducing a lot of it every year and so we have to remind people that this is not a one-time clean-up, and when it's done we'll have a beer and retire.” Stover adds. “It's an ongoing issue that [our company] is trying to set up a model to capture the waste.”

While scattered beach plastics vary in makeup, shape, and composition, fishing nets are consistent. Because there are only a few predominant material types that are used for nets worldwide, this makes for an easy-to-identify material—the nylon net you find in North America is going to be almost identical to the nylon net that you will find in Asia or South America. That reliability allowed for more efficient work at scale and a greater potential positive impact.

But to get working on their recycling solution, the Bureo team had to start with local nonprofits, partnering directly with fishing communities in coastal regions and paying fishermen for nets to be sorted, cleaned, shredded, and packed at Bureo’s facilities before heading to their recycling partners. There, the nets are broken down and reformed into Bureo’s own NetPlus nylon pellets. The NetPlus pellets are then extruded into high-quality yarns ready to be woven into a range of performance fabrics. The program supports cleaner and stronger coastal communities with employment, nonprofit funding, and improved waste infrastructure that directly addresses environmental concerns.

At the start of the program, Kneppers recalls one of the best surprises was the reaction from the fishing communities when they first showed them products made with their recycled fishing nets.

“Early on, we did our best to explain—in our broken Spanish—what we planned to do with their old fishing nets. I think most of them either thought we were explaining it wrong or simply didn’t believe that we could turn their discarded nets into something new,” Kneppers says. “When we finally brought back the first finished products, they were amazed. The fishermen felt a real sense of pride seeing something valuable made from their old nets. Word spread quickly after that, and more fishers wanted to contribute their nets—this was the moment when the program really began to take off.”

With their first net collection program in Chile set up in 2013, Bureo began production of the world’s first skateboard deck made from recycled fishing nets, called the Minnow. The team then quickly realized that they could maximize their impact by moving away from the skateboard business to a company delivering recycled materials to established industries. From there, they focused on scaling up their recycling program, eventually leading to partnerships with brands to create products including sunglasses, surf fins, and even a Jenga® board game. 

Patagonia was among the first companies to back Bureo’s approach. Corey Simpson, Patagonia’s Communications Manager for Product and Sport, notes that in 2014, Patagonia gave seed funding to Bureo to help develop their inventive NetPlus material. NetPlus was first used by Patagonia in 2021 in their hat brims but today, NetPlus is used in over 150 of their styles, including technical winter outerwear.

Another Bureo collaborator is Outerknown, a clothing brand committed to sustainability with a little extra skin in the surf game. Co-founded by legendary pro surfer Kelly Slater and John Moore, the team had wanted to work with Bureo for years. First meeting with the crew during a beach cleanup in Hawaii, Slater was inspired by Bureo’s mission. The deep, shared connection to protecting ocean environments made the partnership a no-brainer.

Outerknown uses the NetPlus material in their APEX Evolution trunks and a newly launched Men’s Shirt and All-Terrain Bottoms. Anna Meyer, Chief of Staff and Sustainability at Outerknown, says that while surfers appreciate the APEX trunks for their performance, comfort, and durability, it also matters to them that the material addresses ocean plastics.

Each year, the team keeps track of the volume of nets retrieved which now aggregates to over 15 million pounds. In 2024 alone, over 5.1 million products made with NetPlus material entered the market.

Now with a well-established supply chain and partner Rolodex, Bureo has begun pursing nonprofit partnerships with the likes of Chile Solar PV,  Ecuador Leatherback Project, Mexico Tortoise Project, and the Peru Education Program to lead by example in the communities in which they operate. As more nets get recycled, more funding flows to these local environmental nonprofits. To date, Bureo has helped implement 12 projects across 17 communities, raising $200,000 to support waste infrastructure, local employment, and environmental nonprofit funding.

Since its launch, Bureo’s mission has stayed the same, but the scale today is hard to ignore. The innovative recycling company isn’t just protecting the ocean, it is empowering coastline communities to do the same and ensuring that the next waves keep on coming.