How To Make Plastic From Seaweed | World Wide Waste | Business Insider

once this goop cools and dries it'll look and act a lot like plastic wrap but it's made from seaweed I don't think it would taste very good but you could eat it there are thousands of known species of this flexible see-through plant you can see how far it stretches you can see how it resists it also grows fast one type called giant kelp can grow up to two feet every day with a few tweaks to its chemistry slimy kelp can form clear sheets that keep products clean and fresh and can break down in a compost bin our materials will degrade a little bit slower than lettuce but faster than something like a corn cob startups around the world are racing to transform seaweed into a biodegradable replacement for shopping bags food wrappers and other hard to recycle Packaging but can they compete with ultra cheap plastic we visited California to see how abundant ocean plants could help fight worldwide waste Julia Marsh founded sway in 2020. startup that designs compostable replacements for single-use Plastics her work is focused on hard to recycle thin films these make up nearly half of the plastic going into the ocean every year and marine life often confuses it for food Julia started her career as a packaging designer but eventually realized she was adding to that problem usually I was working with plastic and that really felt at odds with my upbringing growing up in a place like this he spent almost every morning of her childhood poking around these tide pools we would always tide pool and find little hermit crabs and play jump rope with strands of kelp kelp and many other types of seaweed Thrive here well think of seaweed as being Brown and kind of slimy and it smells bad but seaweed comes in all sorts of colors like an entire rainbow usually the Browns are the ones that carry alginate and the reds are the ones that carry agar those ingredients are part of why certain types of seaweed are slimy or squishy this is really simplified but that slime can be dried and powdered and re-jelified and that's how you create gels that process starts at sway's lab where the team tests out recipes this laboratory set up here is primarily for formulation development small scale as well as lab testing the first ingredient is this white powder sourced from processing centers which wash and dry seaweed it comes from inside the plant cells Engineers here add that powder to water and heat it up it has a little bit of an ocean scent to it next they'll add sugars and starches from Plants including coconut and wheat this batch also has plant-based green dye [Music] the last step is called casting we're going to take our Blended solution and we're going to cast it into a film after about 10 seconds it's cool enough to peel off the team will cut this sheet into strips and run tests we're going to put the specimen inside of these two grips and with this foot pedal that's underneath here it'll close the grips this machine tests how far the strip can stretch the goal is to make materials that look and act just like regular plastic so when this gets out of the testing phase manufacturers can switch to seaweed packaging without buying new equipment we're not asking individuals to make those choices we're asking the corporations and the brands that are most responsible for producing waste to switch to our material that means getting the strength stretch water resistance and color just right this type of film can be sealed with heat just like a chip bag I know there's a seal right up here Julia says food wrappers are the next step but those have to meet strict industry standards and often have multiple layers right now her sights are set on simpler Plastic Products like the ones used in the fashion industry low-hanging fruit we're starting here because this is a huge problem globally retail bags and poly bags are some of the most pervasive polluters of marine systems poly bags are used at many steps of fashion Supply chains to keep clothes pristine in transit Julia says some fashion brands are running pilot tests with sway packaging but didn't tell Insider which brands if those go well it could be available to the public sometime next year in 2021 sway entered the competition for the Tom Ford plastic Innovation prize which will award over 1 million dollars to startups that can find a viable replacement for the poly bag of the eight finalists make their products out of seaweed that's probably because it has a lot going for it grows quickly you don't have to feed it anything you don't need pesticides or fertilizer no fresh water it's just growing and you can Harvest seaweed without killing the plant you basically give it a haircut and then it regenerates of course slicing off tons of natural seaweed would disrupt ecosystems so the company works with seaweed Farms this business in India isn't a sway supplier but it showcases how simple farming seaweed can be with just basic equipment we need to design climate resilient employment opportunities for Coastal communities that have been affected by overfishing and climate change and seaweed farming is the perfect answer and it can actually improve natural surroundings too while it's growing it's reversing the effects of ocean acidification and providing Habitat For biodiverse Life Julia says that idea influenced her early design process I became obsessed with the concept of regeneration which is going A Step Beyond sustainability keeping things the way that they are and actually replenishing natural systems and improving quality of life [Music] sway works with facilities like this one to test whether its products are really compostable Julia says at places like this the packaging is gone in under 48 days in home compost bins it can take a few weeks longer and it can actually leave soil better off than it was before by adding nutrients the company is still running tests to see how long it would take to break down in ocean water many types of bioplastic already exist the whole Market could be worth about 46 billion dollars by the end of this decade Julia says because seaweed is Affordable and abundant sway's films can underprice the competition once the company scales up for now hearing from lots of other seaweed entrepreneurs gives her hope I meet so many people my age older younger finding real solutions that actually can scale and scaling them so I feel hopeful yeah even though I'm regularly confronted with the intensity of the problem I feel hopeful

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 752,705

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, sustainability, environmentalism, seaweed, plastic, plastic alternative, nature, ocean, plants

Id: 337OhJZ-_cc

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022