Plastics are everywhere. If you take a minute to look around your house, it’s really quite astonishing how much of it we use. It’s no wonder why plastics became so ubiquitous: it’s a cheap, flexible, and durable material. The issue is that these durable materials have been commonly used for single-use disposable items such as eating utensils, bags, containers, straws, packaging, bottles, the list goes on and on.
These single use items typically end up in the trash and can take up to 6 generations to breakdown. Plastics in the ocean have been accumulating at a far faster pace than their ability to break down. Some studies suggest at this rate there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. To make matters worse, as plastics break down they create smaller and smaller plastic particles, commonly referred to as micro-plastics. Micro-plastics have made headlines in the last decade as, to our horror, we have discovered that we consume them constantly. Micro-plastics have been found in seafood, beer, salt, chicken, and water.
In response some cities have banned some plastic items, most notably bags and straws. However, this is a drop in the bucket and banning plastics entirely would be a political and economical nightmare. Luckily, seaweed is here to the rescue. A few clever groups have found ways to replace single use plastics by using seaweed extracts. So far we have seen seaweed replace packaging, straws, bottles, and even surf boards. These items are not only biodegradable, but generated from a sustainable resource. Look for more and more of these items to pop up in the near future.