How to Dispose of Monofilament Fishing Line Without Harming Wildlife

• Give A Shit About Nature
• April 18, 2026
• Sustainable Living
• 0 Comments

Fishing line is easy to forget about once a trip is over. You clip the old line off, maybe toss it in the trash or drop it on the ground near the water, and you’re done. It’s thin. It’s light. It seems like nothing.

The problem is that “nothing” sticks around for roughly 600 years.

Monofilament — the single-strand nylon line most anglers use — doesn’t break down in any meaningful timeframe in the environment. When it ends up in water or on a shoreline, it stays exactly as dangerous as the day it was cut, tangling legs, wings, beaks, and flippers of wildlife that never asked to be part of your fishing trip.

What Monofilament Actually Does to Wildlife

The mechanism is grimly straightforward. Fishing line is nearly invisible, strong, and tends to tighten rather than break when an animal struggles against it. Birds are especially vulnerable — herons, pelicans, cormorants, loons, ducks, and shorebirds all encounter discarded line regularly around piers, shorelines, and boat ramps.

Line wraps around legs and can cut off circulation completely. It catches on wings and prevents flight. It tangles around beaks and makes feeding impossible. Starvation is a common outcome when line wraps around a bird’s neck or accumulates in its stomach.

In a study of bald eagle breeding territories in Arizona, half of the nesting areas had documented monofilament entanglement or had monofilament in the nest — because adult birds sometimes bring in fish that still have line attached, and birds occasionally pick up line as nesting material, not knowing what it is. Two bald eagle nestlings in that study died from starvation after entanglement.

Sea turtles, marine mammals, and fish are also regularly affected. NOAA Fisheries documents that entanglement is a global problem affecting hundreds of species, and that derelict fishing gear — line and nets lost or discarded — poses the greatest entanglement threat to wildlife of any marine debris category. A study by Ocean Conservancy and Australia’s CSIRO rated derelict fishing gear higher than plastic bags and balloons for wildlife harm.

The line that ends up causing this damage often isn’t thrown directly into water on purpose. It blows off boats. It falls off piers. It gets snagged on vegetation, breaks, and stays there. It gets tossed loosely in a trash can and works its way out. The intent usually isn’t careless — the result often is.

Why Throwing It in the Trash Isn’t Enough

The instinct is to put it in the garbage, and that’s better than leaving it on the ground — but it’s not a clean solution either. Loose monofilament in a trash bag can work its way out in transport. It blows out of open trash cans at boat launches. Animals rummaging through garbage at landfill sites can become tangled. And unlike most plastic waste, monofilament is too thin and specialized to go through curbside recycling — standard recycling facilities aren’t set up to handle it.

If you do end up throwing line in the trash, cut it into pieces shorter than six inches first. Short pieces are far less likely to entangle anything. This is worth doing consistently, but it’s not the same as keeping the material out of the waste stream entirely.

The Better Option: Monofilament Recycling Bins

This is the part most people don’t know about. Monofilament fishing line can be recycled — specifically by the Berkley Conservation Institute, which has been running a fishing line recycling program since 1990. Since then, they’ve recycled more than 9 million miles of line. The collected monofilament is melted down into plastic pellets and used to make new products, including fish habitat structures deployed in lakes and reservoirs.

Recycling bins specifically for fishing line show up at many boat ramps, fishing piers, marinas, and tackle shops. They’re typically small white tubes mounted on posts near the water — easy to miss if you don’t know to look for them. State fish and wildlife agencies in Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Virginia, and others maintain networks of these bins and run active programs to expand them.

If there’s no bin at your usual fishing spot, you can mail monofilament directly to:

Berkley Recycling 1900 18th Street Spirit Lake, Iowa 51360

No charge. Remove hooks, weights, and tackle first, and only send monofilament — braided line and wire can’t go through their process.

How to Find a Bin Near You

Florida’s program is one of the most developed, run by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as the Monofilament Recovery and Recycling Program. Texas Sea Grant runs a similar program along the Gulf Coast. The Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania maintains a bin network throughout their region. Most state fish and wildlife agencies either run programs or can tell you where the nearest collection point is. Searching your state’s name plus “monofilament recycling” will usually surface local programs quickly.

If your regular fishing spot doesn’t have a bin, you can request one. The Berkley Conservation Institute will ship collection bins at no charge to marinas, tackle shops, fishing clubs, and other organizations willing to maintain them. Plenty of programs have started because one angler asked a local bait shop to participate.

The Habit Worth Building

The people most likely to be leaving line in the environment aren’t the ones who don’t care — they’re the ones who never thought much about it. Fishing line is a byproduct of an activity people associate with being outdoors and in nature, which makes it easy to mentally categorize as not quite the same as other litter.

It is, though. Thin plastic that lasts six centuries is thin plastic that lasts six centuries, whether or not it started as fishing gear.

The habit is simple: collect your used line, cut any discarded line you come across into short pieces, and drop your monofilament at a recycling bin whenever you can find one. If you find line on a pier or shoreline, picking it up and putting it somewhere it can’t migrate back into the water is genuinely useful — you don’t have to organize anything or sign up for anything to do it.

This is the kind of small action that actually adds up. Bald eagles in the U.S. have been documented dying from lead poisoning from lead fishing sinkers and ammunition — a parallel problem with a similar individual-choice solution. Sea turtles finding their way to the wrong spot is another place where a simple human action makes a real difference to an individual animal. Monofilament fits the same pattern: a hazard that’s invisible until it isn’t, with a practical solution that most people simply haven’t been told about.

Now you have been.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I put fishing line in curbside recycling? No. Monofilament is a high-density nylon plastic that standard recycling facilities aren’t equipped to process. It needs to go to a specialized program like Berkley’s, either through a local collection bin or by mail.

What about braided or fluorocarbon line? Berkley’s program accepts monofilament only — single-strand nylon line. Braided line and wire cannot be recycled through their process. If you’re disposing of those, cutting into short pieces before trashing is the best option to reduce wildlife risk.

What if there’s no recycling bin near me? You can mail line directly to Berkley Recycling at 1900 18th Street, Spirit Lake, Iowa 51360. There’s no fee. If you fish regularly at a spot without a bin, contacting the Berkley Conservation Institute about placing one is straightforward — they supply bins at no cost to participating locations.

Is it worth picking up discarded line I find at the water? Yes, meaningfully so. Line already in the environment and snagged on vegetation or lying on a shoreline is an active hazard. Picking it up, cutting it into short pieces, and disposing of it properly removes a real risk from the local wildlife. It takes about 30 seconds and matters more than it looks like it should.

Does fishing line in the trash really end up back in the environment? It can, through a few routes: it blows out of open containers, works its way out during transport, or becomes accessible to animals at landfill sites. Cutting it into short pieces before trashing and putting it in a sealed bag significantly reduces — though doesn’t eliminate — these pathways. Recycling is the cleaner option when it’s accessible.