By Karen Scofield Seal
Demand for plant-based food and nutrition is growing. According to recent retail sales data, grocery sales of plant-based foods in place of animal products grew 29% in the U.S. to $5 billion between 2017 and 2019.
Sustainably farmed seaweed could help meet this need, while also providing compostable, marine-safe packaging. UK-based biotech start-up Oceanium has developed innovative, "green and clean" biorefinery technology to make both these things possible.
With grant funding from Innovate UK and seed investment from Sky Ocean Ventures and Katapult Ocean (the latter two being ocean impact VCs), is focusing on scaling up their high-tech, innovative biorefinery and product development to find out more about the start-up's history, development and plans for the future. We spoke to Oceanium's Karen Scofield to find out more about the start-up's history, development and plans for the future.
How Oceanium's technology works. Oceanium
How Did Oceanium Come About?
I met my Co-Founder and our CTO, Dr Charlie Bavington, PhD in May 2018. My background is in partnership and business development, brand-building and marketing. I've worked with (RED), Comic Relief and also run my own successful e-commerce business. After completing a postgraduate certificate at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership, I conducted extensive research on what type of business I could start that would have the most impact and that's when I discovered seaweed. Ever since then, I have been passionate about sharing its environmental and societal benefits.
Charlie is a brilliant biochemist who has been developing and commercializing marine-based products for the past 20 years. He was the Founder of the successful biotech company, GlycoMar, and has extensive experience developing marine-based products for commercial use. He currently has five patents to his name and is about to file two more for Oceanium bio-packaging. I shared my vision of making packaging from seaweed with Charlie, who confirmed that this was possible but that there was also an opportunity to capitalize on all the food and nutritional ingredients in seaweed too. Charlie and I co-founded Oceanium in June 2018, and have been moving forward swiftly ever since.
How Is Oceanium Contributing to the Low-Carbon Economy?
Oceanium's impact mission is to enable the emerging sustainable seaweed farming industry by creating demand for farmed seaweed. Sustainable seaweed farming helps to mitigate climate change via carbon and nitrogen absorption. According to the World Bank, seaweed can absorb 47kg of carbon per wet tonne which equates to approximately one tonne of carbon per hectare annually.
Seaweed farming in Oban, Scotland. Oceanium
Of course, some of that carbon will go back into the system. So we are conducting life-cycle analysis on our process and products so we may improve efficiencies but also to measure and report our impact as we grow and go to market. We are liaising with organizations like Seaweed for Europe and the UN Global Compact Seaweed Manifesto to help quantify this carbon absorption and to ensure this exciting new industry grows in a sustainable and managed fashion.
Seaweed farms protect the seabed from commercial fishing and other harmful practices and create a marine sanctuary for sea life. Seaweed farming also has other immensely positive environmental impacts, as it does not require cleared land, freshwater, insecticide or fertilizer. Our seaweed-based materials can replace resource-intensive food and feedstocks which often contribute to deforestation. In addition, seaweed farms encourage responsible coastal management and create marine protected areas for sealife.
What About the Economic and Societal Impact of Your Business?
Seaweed as a food source will help ensure food security. It's incredibly nutritious and full of vitamins, minerals and protein-essential micronutrients, particularly antioxidants.
The world will require 50–70% more food by 2050 and with increasing drought conditions and decreasing soil quality, seaweed provides a sustainable solution to this challenge.
Seaweed can help close the "protein gap" in the more immediate term: Europe currently imports 70% of its protein but Oceanium plans to process and sell its outputs on a regional basis to reduce transport miles of our products. We aim to contribute towards economic development and job creation in coastal communities by supporting small-scale farmers when purchasing seaweed, promoting best practice farming techniques and helping enable the nascent sustainable seaweed farming industry in the UK, EU and in the developing world.
A pilot trial of Oceanium's proprietary biorefinery process. Oceanium
What Has Been the Impact of COVID-19 on Oceanium?
Oceanium has continued to move forward despite the pandemic. At a start-up there is always plenty to do and we've been working on developing relationships across the value chain, researching and analyzing new opportunities, and conducting research. Interestingly, our nutraceutical product, Fucoidan, has proven to be an effective COVID-19 antiviral in vitro and we are watching this research closely.
What's Next on the Horizon?
Oceanium continues to progress with research and development for our food ingredients (protein and fiber), nutraceuticals (Fucoidan, Beta glucan) and circular life-cycle bio packaging materials (film and board).
We have also begun work on two new Innovate UK grants. The first is focused on further development of the bio-packaging materials; the second looks at maximizing efficiencies across all aspects of the production process, from the seaweed farm to final product development.
Oceanium research associate Andre Rastica at work. Oceanium
We are scaling our innovative biorefinery process – we processed approximately 8 tonnes of wet seaweed in December and have plans for 45 tonnes in 2021.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to build relationships with seaweed farmers in the UK, EU and North America. We are also fundraising for further R&D, patent applications and undergoing regulatory processes as we prepare to launch products in 2021. We are well on our way to "Kelp the World"!
What Resources or Assistance Do You Need to Achieve Your Ambitions That You Currently Don't Have? Is There Any Assistance That the Uplink Community Could Offer?
Definitely. Our nutraceutical products will go to market next year and we are looking for commercial or business development experts in the nutrition and cosmetics space. Importantly, we are also fundraising so always keen to connect with funders and investors!
Reposted with permission from World Economic Forum.
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According to Forbes, the Three R's sustainability catch-phrase, and the recycling cause it bolstered, remain synonymous with the U.S. environmental movement itself. There's only one problem: despite being touted as one of the most important personal actions that individuals can take to help the planet, "recycling" – as currently carried out in the U.S. – doesn't work and doesn't help.
Turns out, there is a vast divide between the misleading, popular notion of recycling as a "solution" to the American overconsumption problem and the darker reality of recycling as a failing business model.
The Myth: Recycling Began as a Plastics' Industry Marketing Tactic
A recycling dumpster in Los Angeles. Citizen of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
When it was first introduced, recycling likely had altruistic motivations, Forbes reported. However, the system that emerged was never equipped to handle high volumes. Unfortunately, as consumption increased, so too did promotion of recycling as a solution. The system "[gave] manufacturers of disposable items a way to essentially market overconsumption as environmentalism," Forbes reported. Then and now, "American consumers assuage any guilt they might feel about consuming mass quantities of unnecessary, disposable goods by dutifully tossing those items into their recycling bins and hauling them out to the curb each week."
Little has changed since that Forbes article, titled "Can Recycling Be Bad For The Environment?," was published almost a decade ago; increases in recycling have been eclipsed by much higher consumption rates. In fact, consumerism was at an all-time high in January 2020 before the pandemic hit, Trading Economics reported.
But, if the system doesn't work, why does it continue? Turns out, consumers were misled – by the oil and gas industry. News reports from September 2020 revealed how the plastic industry-funded ads in the 1980s that heralded recycling as a panacea to our growing waste problem. These makers of virgin plastics were the biggest proponents and financial sponsors of plastic recycling programs because they created the illusion of a sustainable, closed-cycle while actually promoting the continued use of raw materials for new single-use plastics.
To the masses, these programs justified overconsumption and eased concerns over trash that could be thrown into recycling bins, Forbes reported. Generations of well-meaning Americans since the 1970's and '80's – believing these communications masterminds – have dutifully used-then-recycled plastics and other materials. They trusted that their discards would be reborn as new goods instead of ending up in oceans and landfills.
The plastics industry went even further, lobbying 40 states to put the recycling triangle symbol on all plastic – even if it wasn't recyclable, Houston Public Media reported. This bolstered the public image of plastic as a renewable resource, but the cost was clarity about what actually can be recycled. As recent as 2020, a Greenpeace report found that many U.S. products labeled as recyclable could not actually be processed by most domestic material recovery facilities.
The Reality: Most Recyclables Aren't Being Recycled
An initial pre-sort removes contaminates, items that can't be recycled, at Republic Services in Anaheim, California on Thursday, April 15, 2021. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register / Getty Images
The U.S. relies on single-stream recycling systems, in which recyclables of all sorts are placed into the same bin to be sorted and cleaned at recycling facilities. Well-meaning consumers are often over-inclusive, hoping to divert trash from landfills. Unfortunately, the trash often ends up there anyways – with the additional cost of someone at a recycling plant sorting through it.
The single-stream system is easier on consumers, but results in a mixed stream of materials that is easy to contaminate, hard to sort and more expensive to process. There are a variety of items – including dirty pizza boxes, old clothing, hangers, plastic bags, aerosols, batteries and electronics – that, if added to a residential recycling bin, will contaminate the entire batch of recyclables, a Miami recycling center representative told EcoWatch. At that point, it can be too costly and too dangerous for employees to hand-pick out erroneous items. Because these items cannot be processed in the same way as recyclable materials, their inclusion often means the whole batch will fetch a lower price from buyers or must be thrown away.
"Most people have the attitude that if they just put it in the blue bin, it will get taken away and somebody will figure out what to do with it, but putting something in the blue bin and actually recycling it are two very different things," said David Biderman, CEO and executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America.
Misunderstandings, misinformation and mislabeling aside, the harsh reality was and remains that most plastic can't and won't be recycled, reported NPR. For example, the EPA reported that plastic generation in 2018 was 35.7 million tons, accounting for 12.2 percent of municipal solid waste (MSW) that year. Of this total, only three million tons were recycled (an 8.7 percent recycling rate). The vast majority – 27 million tons – ended up in landfills, and the rest was combusted. The environmental agency also estimated that less than 10 percent of plastic thrown in bins in the last 40 years has actually been recycled.
The situation is slightly better for other recyclables, though they make up a smaller percentage of MSW. For example, glass products totaled 12.3 million tons in 2018, or 4.2 percent of the annual MSW generation. Almost 25 percent of glass was recycled, 61.6 percent ended up in landfills and 13.4 percent was combusted.
Post-consumer paper and cardboard for 2018 totaled 67.4 million tons, or 23.1 percent of total MSW generation for the year. The material also had the highest recycling rate of any other material in MSW – 68.2 percent. 25.6 percent of paper ended up in landfills and 6.23 percent was combusted.
According to this EPA data, recyclable plastics, glass and paper accounted for 18.5 percent, 5.2 percent and 11.8 percent of MSW landfilled in 2018, respectively. Those three materials alone comprised 35.5 percent of the total landfilled trash in the U.S. for the year; had they been properly collected, processed and purchased, they theoretically could have been diverted and recycled.
The Reason: Recycling Is Bad Business Around the World
Recyclable waste must be sorted, cleaned and processed before it can be sold as a commodity on the open market. Nareeta Martin / Unsplash
Unfortunately, the EPA data also shows that 2018 was not an anomaly but rather another data point showing how the single-stream system in the U.S. has never been economically viable or feasible on a large scale. To further understand why recycling in America is failing, we need to think of recycled goods as commodities – because that's what they are.
According to the recycling center representative, municipalities and counties pay for residential and commercial recyclables to be trucked to local and regional recycling plants for processing. Clean batches are sorted and/or compressed into bales of similar plastics, paper, aluminum or glass. The centers sell the cleaned recyclables on the open market to buyers who will process them into recycled materials like plastic pellets or post-consumer paper; these can be turned into new products.
This entire process – the processing and creation of saleable recycled goods – costs money. As with any good, profitability requires selling for a higher price than it costs to make. Contaminated batches are harder to process into new products and therefore fetch a lower price on the market, if they can be sold at all. Currently, U.S. recyclables are no longer profitable, and no one wants to buy them.
China used to buy the majority of the world's plastics and paper for recycling, The New York Times reported. The U.S. has been the #1 generator of plastic waste in the world for years and used to ship more than half of its total plastic production to China, a November 2020 study found. The research also noted that up to one-fourth of American plastics sent abroad were contaminated or of poor quality, which would make it extremely difficult to recycle anyways.
Starting Jan. 1, 2018, China banned imports of most scrap materials because shipments were too contaminated, The Times reported; the country no longer wanted to be the "world's garbage dump."
As a result, the U.S. and other Western nations who had relied on China to offload their recyclables saw a "mounting crisis" of paper and plastic waste building up in ports and recycling facilities, The Times reported.
The Western nations began sending recyclable waste to other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. These countries often lacked the infrastructure to handle recyclables, so a lot of the waste ended up incinerated or landfilled
In response, in 2019, the United Nations passed an amendment to the Basel Convention hoping to protect the poor and developing countries who'd taken up China's vacated role in the global recycling trade. The amendment ambitiously aimed to clean up the global trade in plastic waste, making it more transparent and better regulated and allowing developing countries to reject contaminated shipments. The U.S. did not ratify the amendment, and new evidence suggests it continues to send illegal and/or contaminated shipments to developing countries.
Domestically, the closing of the Chinese market to U.S. recyclables bankrupted many domestic recycling programs because there was too much supply and no real demand. The smaller Asian countries could not accept nearly as much as China had. Prices of recyclables dropped, and bales of scrap materials were sent to landfills and incinerators when they couldn't be sold, another Times article reported.
This left waste-management companies around the country with no market for recyclabes, The Atlantic reported. They've been forced to go back to cities and municipalities with two choices: pay a lot more to get rid of their recycling or throw it away. The news report noted that most are choosing the latter.
"The economics are challenging," agreed Nilda Mesa, director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program at the Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Urban Development. "If there is not a market for the recycled material, then the numbers do not work for these facilities as well as cities, as they need to sell the materials to recoup their costs of collection and transportation, and even then it's typically only a portion of the costs," Columbia's State of the Planet reported.
Tiffany Duong is an avid ocean advocate. She holds degrees from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and is an Al Gore Climate Reality Leader and student member of The Explorer's Club.
She spent years as a renewable energy lawyer in L.A. before moving to the Amazon to conduct conservation fieldwork (and revamp her life). She eventually landed in the Florida Keys as a scientific scuba diver and field reporter and writes about the oceans, climate, and the environment from her slice of paradise. Follow her on Twitter/Instagram @lilicedt.
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