Tucked away along the west coast of Wales is perhaps one of the most beautiful beaches in the country, where a boat with white sails floats in crystal clear water so clear you can see crabs swimming on the ocean floor. This is Portlisgue, a secluded bay between St Davids and Porthclere Harbour, so peaceful it’s hard to imagine living on a planet threatened by environmental disaster.
The scale of one such threat, single-use plastic, is poorly understood: around 380 million metric tons of plastic are produced each year and people use around 1.2 million plastic bottles every minute. Billions of pieces of plastic end up in our oceans, lakes and rivers. However, there is one British company that has part of the solution, and the answer lies in the pristine waters of Pembrokeshire.
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(Image: Câr-Y-Môr)
Look closely and you’ll notice the tiniest of tracks: a group of colorful buoys stretching up to the headland. This is the Câr-Y-Môr Algae Farm, a social enterprise created to meet the growing demand for aquaculture. It’s also home to Notpla, a London-based company that harvests some of the seaweed it uses as a viable alternative to plastic packaging. It’s a hot topic: from autumn 2023, the sale of some single-use plastics will be banned in Wales and England will follow suit.
Founded by two visionary scientists, one French and one Spanish, Notpla recently retired as one of the recipients of the Prince William Earthshot Prize. The award gave him international recognition for the work he does, but the £1m prize was “significant” for a start-up that still loses more money than it makes.
(Image: Notpla)
You’ve probably seen Notpla’s line of biodegradable products somewhere before. Her edible bubble-shaped water balloons were used at the 2019 London Marathon, and her seaweed-covered food boxes were used at Wembley Stadium as England Women emerged victorious in the UEFA Women’s Championship. And Swiss watch brand ID Genève uses the Notpla rigid case as the first compostable packaging for the luxury watch industry.
Rodrigo García González, 38, started working on the concept with Pierre-Yves Paslier, a former packaging engineer at L’Oréal, in 2013, while they were studying innovative design engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. Seven years later, this is no longer a student project, but a viable business.
(Image: Notpla)
(Image: Long Long Han)
It may look a little abandoned, but the seaweed’s properties make it an excellent alternative, explained Rodrigo. “We were looking at different ways that nature retains fluids,” he said. “And our main inspiration was fruit and seeing how fruit holds liquid. We were inspired by coconuts or grapes and their different types of membranes. What we are trying to do is packaging that looks more like fruit. [peels] Algae seem to offer the perfect solution.
READ MORE: We asked Welsh scientists how worried they are about climate change
“We use different types of seaweed,” continued Rodrigo. “It grows very fast, does not compete with fresh water and does not use land or fertilizer. There is much more sea than land in our world, and aquaculture is one of the most sustainable ways of producing products that we have as a society. certain materials. As a bonus, wild kelp absorbs around 175 million metric tons of CO2 each year, and commercial kelp farming is working on that.
(Image: Sam’s Scales)
(Image: Notpla)
Rodrigo explains that seaweed cultivation in the United Kingdom is not as developed as in other countries, such as France. Câr-Y-Môr is one of the first in Wales and Notpla is one of the first customers.
“It’s not the only seaweed we use,” Rodrigo said. “We also received something from the north of France. Depending on the type of seaweed they offer different quality. So, for example, algae in Spain is melting. And seaweed is very good because it retains water much better. So it really depends on what we’re using.”
Rodrigo and Pierre are “realistic” because the products they develop are not a solution for everything, but they can solve some problems: “Reduction is the solution to the plastic problem”, said Rodrigo. They are focusing on using their seaweed alternative for short-term applications where water and liquids need to be protected for a short period of time rather than weeks and months at a time.
It starts with harvesting the seaweed and then washing it before drying it into powder. It is then poured into large vats to produce a “soup-like” liquid that is used to coat paper or cardboard. This creates a layer that prevents the leakage of liquids or fats, explains Rodrigo.
(Image: Long Long Han)
(Image: Notpla)
“Plastic can last 700 years, but we use minutes, hours, days”, completes Rodrigo. So the water-filled edible bubble used in the London Marathon would only last a few days and needed to be given to people wearing gloves. But that meant there was no need for a plastic bottle: runners could bite a corner and drink.
About 30-40% of runners ate the package during the marathon; the rest was thrown away. If it ends up on the ground, it can either be cleaned up “like leaves” or it decomposes quickly too. This is very different from most compostable plastics, which must be in an industrial composting facility to be decomposed.
By the same principle, you can dispose of plastic ketchup bags. Notpla has partnered with food delivery service Just Eat.
The company’s name, Notpla, means “non-plastic,” but it’s also a development of PLA, a corn-based plastic that acts like regular plastic if it ends up in the ocean. It is somewhat ironic that their London warehouse is located next to the warehouse where plastic was invented in 1860.
Rodrigo is proud to say that this is the first UK company to receive an Earthshot award. Founded by the Royal Foundation and Prince William in 2020, the group calls this decade a “critical decade for the planet” and aims to award millions in prizes every year through 2030 to help innovative companies scale solutions to environmental challenges. .
“It’s very important to win the award,” said Rodrigo. “It gives us much more visibility and control over our operations. And of course the £1 million prize money is quite significant because as a start-up company we lose a lot more money than we make. It is appreciated to be honored in this way.”
“Notpla shows that the future isn’t plastic, it’s algae,” says the Earthshot Prize website. It is encouraging to see Wales playing a role in creating that future.
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Source: Wales Online
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
