Seaweed Over Plastic? The Next Sustainable Innovation?

 

An estimated 500 billion or more plastic bags are used worldwide each year, whether these are retail shopping bags or thin wrappers used to protect clothes. New start-ups are exploring the use of Seaweed to be used as a sustainable material to replace these plastics bags with amazing success!

An amazing new trend at the forefront of sustainability is using seaweed to replaced petroleum-based plastic bags responsible for clogging up landfills and polluting the ocean.

Worldwide plastic pollution shows no signs of stopping, despite legislating against single use plastics, both discouraging it financially and outright banning it.

There are a number of small companies on the forefront of this Seaweed mission, such as Sway (making bags), Evoware (creating edible products such as dry food sachets), Ooho (making edible water bottles) or even Loliware (creating cups and straws).

An estimated 500 billion or more plastic bags are used worldwide each year, whether these are retail shopping bags or thin wrappers used to protect clothes. Using biodegradable and sustainable seaweed material as the basis for these bags will allow the to break down quickly in a backyard compost. Moreover, Julia Marsh (CEO of Sway) says they’re stronger than the plastic they mimic.

Farmed seaweed is emerging as a promising climate solution, and not just for plastic. The U.S. government has funded research into its use as a biofuel, and it can lower the carbon footprint of agriculture, both as a petroleum-free fertiliser and as a feed supplement that reduces methane emissions in cattle.

Seaweed also sequesters what’s known as blue carbon, the buzzword for carbon that is stored in marine ecosystems. It’s a promising innovation as blue carbon is expected to be many times more efficient than on land forests.

Photocredit iStockPhoto.com

Processing the seaweed involves trimming it — it grows back very quickly — drying it and separating out the parts that can be used in plastic. That is mostly cellulose, which is combined with other plant-based additives to make thin plastic-like sheets that can be formed into bags or other products. The material can be used with machinery already used to manufacture plastic bags.

Who knows where this journey will take the plastic industry, but if only 1% of plastic bags are replaced with seaweed driven, biodegradable alternatives — that’l mean 5 billion less plastic bags being used yearly.

About Us

Our name is Valuuti and we want to do some good in the world and help fight climate change.

We’re a small start-up brand with an important mission — help nature and fight climate change! Specifically, we want to work with endangered animal charities, plant trees, clean up beaches and start/aid carbon capture and other environmental regeneration projects.

We also want to increase awareness through our environmental blog — talking about important issues, environmental wins and Valuuti updates. Please follow us along for our journey!

In the next few months, we’re launching our sustainable clothing brand, each design linked to its own unique cause and charity. We’ll have:

• Tree hoodies that when purchased, a real tree will be planted.
• Elephant hoodies that support Elephant Conservation charities
• Other services that will fund climate projects and general ideas that do good.

 

Thank you for reading and we hope you follow our journey!

The Valuuti team.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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