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Ocean plastics littering Washington’s coast are finding new life in Bellingham, with the help of a team of professors and students at Western Washington University’s College of Science and Engineering.

Since December, the group has used its expertise and machinery to turn the plastic yellow rope used in oyster farming into crab gauges, which people use to measure their catches and determine if they are large enough to legally keep. “It’s a nice circular design where you’ve collected debris from a fishing industry and are putting it back into the same industry,” said Nicole Hoekstra, a professor of plastics and composite engineering who is helping lead the project.

It’s the type of work that is increasingly garnering the interest of industrial and commercial leaders, as the world grapples with the consequences of its obsession with plastic.

“It is very clear that large companies all along the West Coast are thinking a lot about how we can reuse materials and reduce materials at the source,” said John Misasi, an associate professor at Western Washington University who is also helping lead the project. “More and more money is going into this, and more and more people are going into this.”