The Little Things

It’s starts with something small. You pick up a small discarded beer can on the streamside, and suddenly you’ve got a trashbag slung over your shoulder like some wader-clad Santa Claus. Or, you decide to take up fly tying and buy a few basic materials, and before long your house resembles an arts and crafts store filled with animal hides and bird capes. Don’t even get us started on the when you tell yourself you’ll just try euro-nymphing once…$500 dollars and several weeks later you’re like the Lance Egan of Chattanooga and you call 9 foot rods “tiny”. The point is, an initial commitment to some new endeavor or path often has the potential to grow into something bigger.

For example, we’re trying to find ways around the shop to be better; to clean up our act, so to speak. One small thing we noticed was that there is a fair amount of waste created in a fly shop, namely in plastic byproducts such as empty line spools, old fly lines, plastic fly cups, etc. So we decided to do something about it. It started with recycling the empty fly lines spools, then it quickly spurred a hunt for more ways to lessen our footprint without sacrificing great service or quality gear.

So, we decided to start sending the old fly lines you bring to us (that are in decent condition), to FlyVines to be made into bracelets, lanyards, dog leashes, coasters etc. Products that are now available in store.

Then, after analyzing our plastic fly cups, we realized just how much plastic waste we were sending out into the world each day. Most of which people immediately discard when returning home. The solution: kick the plastic for a better solution. Starting immediately, there will be large reusable boxes made available to shoppers to fill with flies from the bins—think of them as shopping baskets for flies. Bring the box to the counter when you’re done browsing, and we’ll bag the flies, sanitize the reusable boxes for the next customers, and together we’ll stop sending plastic to the landfill. On top of that, new biodegradable cups with the Hatch Logo on the lid are available for $1. These bio cups will also be free with a purchase of over $20 in flies.

Once you add compostable pint-sized cups for our new draft beer kegerator into the mix, and we’re well on our way to being a bona fide “green” shop. It wasn’t our intent, but like I said earlier, these things tend to snowball. – The Hatch