By Kate Henry

For the Homer Independent Press

According to the artist will.I.am, “Waste isn’t waste until we waste it,” and Nicole Baker, founder of Net Your Problem, a local recycling nonprofit, couldn’t agree more. 

Nicole started Net Your Problem as a for-profit business in 2018. At the time, she was working as a biologist for the University of Washington in Seattle. 

“I had the feeling I made it,” she said. 

She  worked for a well respected professor who had no trouble getting grant money for research. She also had an apartment in Seattle, health insurance and a 401(k). She saw these accomplishments as indicators of success, but nagging thoughts harkened her back to a period of time she’d recently spent in Alaska. In particular, she thought about all the nets she’d observed lying around in fishing communities while working as a fisheries observer on boats in Kodiak, Dutch Harbor and Akutan. 

It was in this chapter, between 2010 to 2015, that she realized, “We didn’t have a good way of getting rid of nets at the end of their life. You just saw piles of them everywhere.” In 2015, her field research ended but the image of piled up nets persisted in her mind and an idea began to emerge about a way to reimagine the unsettling waste she witnessed.

“I’m scrolling online and see a story of Adidas making a sneaker out of recycled nets and I also saw a factory in Denmark that was recycling nets,” she said. “So I started investigating this idea and ultimately went up there as a ‘net recycler’ one summer in 2017.”

She took two weeks off from her university job to see if the Alaska fishing market would bite on the recycling concept. With the support of a non-profit, she took a leap of faith, and it worked. This little taste of success ignited her spirit, and she made the decision to start a business and provide recycling services to the fishing industry, beginning in the communities she had worked in as an observer. 

“At that time, I was working as a fisheries biologist with a professor, and we were doing research; we wrote papers, got grants and did science,” she said. 

She juggled both jobs for six years, eventually arriving at a point where she would wake up and have to choose which job she wanted to focus on that day. Net Your Problem just felt like the next right choice, so she made the difficult decision to give up her comfortable job at the University of Washington to pursue the business.

She told herself, “I’m not gonna starve. I could always move back to Akron (where she was raised) and work at a Starbucks.” 

It took time to transition into the recycling business, and she only recently restructured her company as a non-profit. The original business model didn’t provide incentives or benefits to certain parties that she wanted to work with. She struggled to find communities that were willing to support her endeavor, specifically because cities are reluctant to set a precedent of working with for-profit businesses.

 “Being a non-profit is more palatable to people in certain ways and provides direct tax benefits to companies that do things to help us,” she said. 

There are other ways to contribute as well by providing in-kind services or simply donating money, which you can do via her website. I’ve provided a link below the article if you’d like to contribute.


 

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, puts out a list every year of the top ports by landing, meaning how much fish is delivered to the ports to be processed. Her long-term vision is to make recycling services available to fishermen in the top 50 ports, eliminating tons of waste from local landfills. 

“Beyond that,” she said, “I’ve gotten requests from a water park in Connecticut that has netting under the slides.” 

She’s also had requests from a ski resort in Montana, cruise ships, shipping companies and an aqua culture business, not to mention a newspaper and an elevator company. 

“They all use these materials, so I think the other way of growing is to provide this service outside of fishing and even outside the maritime industry, depending on how big we’re able to get,” she said.

I asked Nicole what it was about recycling nets that ultimately drew her away from her academic career. 

She told me, “Five years ago, I never would have said I’m going to be the executive director of a non-profit. I mean I wanted to be a dolphin trainer when I decided to go to school for marine biology. How could you possibly know what the opportunities are going to be in the future? For me, I’ve just made decisions along the way that are going to make me happy. You spend a third of your life working so you should be doing something that makes you happy and brings you joy.”

Nicole dropped out of grad school at one point. She was reluctant to be perceived as a grad school drop out, but at the time she just wasn’t into it. 

“I could not motivate myself to do what I was doing. I dropped out and was working at a vet’s office when I was living in the Caribbean, and I was dating a guy that was working on a private yacht and we traveled all over. I had such a great time and it didn’t negatively affect my future path,” she said. She did end up going back to school and graduated with a masters degree in Marine Biology from the University of Puerto Rico, but this time, she was organized and found a topic that held her interest. 

“It’s hard to see why things happen in the moment, but so many times the universe reveals why later,” she said. “I really feel like there is some force that is guiding us in life, and when you encounter a lot of resistance or road blocks, it’s because you’re not on the right path. So instead of trying to force it, maybe try going 180 degrees in the opposite direction — even if that means quitting a job that would be coveted by a lot of people and doing something that keeps you curious. There’s usually a reason it’s not working. You gotta trust the process.”

Nicole and her partner spent the past two winters house sitting in Homer and just recently moved into a little cabin year round. They love the pace of our small town, value relationships with neighbors and appreciate the local trade economy here.

 “It’s a place where you feel welcomed and supported”, she said. 

She enjoys the myriad of options for social activity and engagement available in Homer and has plenty of hobbies to help her manage stress, including knitting, book club, foraging, writing cards, cross-country skiing and a game she learned at the Kenai Wildlife Refuge called stress management bingo. If you’re curious about that last one, let me know, and we’ll post the details next month. 

Not everyone is in a position to quit a secure job and pursue an Earth-conscious career, but we can all lean into problems we see in and around our lives and look for small ways to make the world a better place. Every gesture towards overall health (people and planet) adds up, whether we’re called to start recycling, take peaceful action towards holding our leaders to higher standards, help a neighbor, invest in kids and the elderly, plant a garden or even take a much needed break for ourselves. 

Nicole’s story reminds me of a book I read titled “The Obstacle Is The Way,” by Ryan Holiday. It’s about stoicism, which is an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy designed to foster resilience, virtue and wisdom, focusing on mastering one’s inner world while accepting external events with equanimity. 

What are our obstacles asking us to observe and perhaps acknowledge about our own participation or complacency in the issues we face today, and how can we turn more obstacles big and small into opportunities around us? When we truly wake up to the realization that we are and have always been the architects of our world, what will we choose to allow and create? 

To learn more about Net Your Problem, visit their website at: netyourproblem.com. You can choose a monthly contribution, or there’s also a one-time option.