What is Sway & the problem they’re aiming to solve

Sway is a California-based material innovation house that has created a regenerative replacement for plastic. The company is using the naturally abundant polymers found in different types of seaweed farmed all over the world to replace annoying single-use plastics. Currently, Sway is focused on replacing thin film plastics, such as bags, wrappers, and pouches associated with food, fashion, personal care, and cosmetics, but Julia hints that they ultimately want to see seaweed making its way into all sorts of climate solutions.

What is Symbrosia & the problem they’re aiming to solve

Symbrosia is a Hawaii-based cleantech company that is commercially growing a new species of algae to reduce enteric methane emissions, the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases affiliated with livestock. They’re now cultivating the species (Asparagopsis taxiformis) for use as a tasty and nutritious cow feed additive. Alexia reveals that with a sprinkle of Symbrosia’s seaweed added to feed, methane emissions can be reduced by over 80% in a commercial setting. 

What’s so special about seaweed & why is it being looked at as a climate solution

As nature-based solutions continue to captivate interest, Julia reminds us that the ocean makes up the majority of our planet. And it’s filled with these underwater forests and gardens that are utterly unexplored. She points out that seaweed has been growing on Earth for over a billion years, providing us with a huge portion of the oxygen we breathe as well as habitat and food for life, underwater and on land. The goal of any company getting into the seaweed space is just to extend that impact, she says.

While farmed seaweed has been making the headlines more frequently for a couple of reasons—it doesn’t need freshwater or arable land, both which are becoming increasingly sparse—that’s only half the story. Julia explains that farmed seaweed can actually contribute to the health of our ocean by improving biodiversity, which is a vital component of combating climate change, buffering ocean acidification, sequestering carbon, and then providing coastal employment to communities that have been affected by overfishing. It’s also just a really efficient and abundant source material—which is what we want for any of the solutions we invest in.

Diving deeper, Alexia notes that seaweed, and algae in general, has been a wonder as an input, particularly around biofuels and gas replacements. Many market pushes have been made to find alternatives to reduce reliance on sources of petroleum, usually for geopolitical reasons. Starting in the ‘70s and through the early 2000s, there was a huge shift in investment from large energy companies pushing for seaweed aquaculture and microalgae production. Shell invested $1 billion dollars into 10 different projects, for example. However, Alexia says that the unit economics for that solution to be feasible would have to basically surpass the possibilities of photosynthesis – so while seaweed might not be the solution for petrol, it could be a financially viable solution for a lot of other inputs like feed and plastic replacements. Alexia posits that the next generation of entrepreneurs are at an important intersection, having been handed all of this research that went far (but couldn’t quite get there) and having awareness of the problems being faced by global corporations today.

Spicy talk around seaweed right now

There’s undoubtedly a lot of hype and aspiration around using seaweed for sequestration right now. While ideas are surfacing about carpeting the entire ocean floor, or as much as possible with seaweed to trap carbon, Julia and Alexia weigh in on why we need to tread carefully here. 

Julia points to the emerging science and unknowns for consideration. Oceans 2050 and the Institute for Abundant Oceans have recently found that seaweed has the global carbon sequestration potential of 421 teragrams, which is roughly a billion kilograms of CO2 annually. However, she says we still don’t truly know what happens when we sink seaweed purposefully, in a man-made way, down to the ocean floor. We don’t know what effect that will have on the water column and how that will affect ecosystems at large, so that’s why it’s a point of tension. As she puts it, the other side would also say, “Why are we sinking valuable material to the bottom of the ocean floor when we could use it for things like livestock feed or biomaterials? Why not use the material that we’re cultivating rather than sending it down to a place where we don’t quite know, definitively the impacts?”

Alexia flags that, like other nature-based solutions, creating scientifically backed and measurable protocols to determine how much carbon is actually sinking is going to be a very difficult process. From personal experience, she says that Symbrosia has seen this with soil carbon; a lot of their customers have been down that pathway and haven’t received funding for changing their soil practices, even though they were told they would. Based on how little we know about the deep ocean at this point, Alexia thinks that we’re still ways out from having a verified carbon credit protocol.

What else should everyone know about seaweed

Julia: “The potential of seaweed and the expansion of the blue economy to sustain coastal communities is my favorite piece of the seaweed story. The World Bank projects there are 50 million indirect jobs and 50 million direct jobs related to the seaweed industry and food alone. The cool thing about seaweed farming is that the majority of seaweed farmers globally are women or people of color. And so there’s a social justice or a social impact component of the seeming strain that maybe is overlooked that should be amplified. Some of my favorite seaweed farmers are based here in the States and they’re women led organizations, where they’re actively transitioning lobster fishermen who maybe need more sustainable employment towards kelp farming. There’s a group called Atlantic Sea Farms, who’s built a model that enables lobster fishermen to farm year-round. In the wintertime, they plant their kelp, and they harvest it in March. And then over the summer, they fish for lobster to have year-round income. Those are the types of models that we need to support as we adapt to the increased impacts of climate change.”

Alexia: “I can speak quickly to my experience here in Hawaii, the blue economy, and promoting aquaculture. During the pandemic, we hit about a 40% unemployment rate because 40% of the population works in tourism. So 40% of the population here works in an extractive industry that does not benefit the local community; the community is here to serve tourists. When we think about the security and the future of Hawaii, having that sort of dependence on tourism and imports is really scary for food security, job security, and the livelihoods of the people that live here. And so creating any sort of local, better paying jobs that involve STEM or agriculture is a really big plus for the community because you’re giving back to that local community. Those resources and that knowledge is staying here and providing increased opportunities and ways to move up and around the organization. So just having alternatives to tourism, where we live is really important.”

Resources Mentioned

• Symbrosia
• Sway
• Regenerative Travel
• AlgiKnit
• Atlantic Sea Farms
• Umaro
• Rootless
• Oceans 2050: Seaweed Project
• Institute for Abundant Oceans
• World Bank: Seaweed Aquaculture for Food Security, Income Generation and Environmental Health in Tropical Developing Countries

Connect with Alexia Akbay & Julia Marsh

• Connect with Alexia
• Connect with Julia

Connect With Jason Rissman

• https://InvestedInClimate.com
• On LinkedIn
• On Twitter

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