Hemanth Giri Rao Vantharam Venkata1, Balamurugan Ayyakkalai1, Jayashree Nath1, Sri Sailaja Nori1, Shrikumar Suryanarayan1
1Sea6 Energy Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India – 560065
Plastics and microplastics continue to accumulate in our seas and oceans, threatening to irreversibly damage fragile ecosystems, posing severe health risks to marine wildlife, penetrating our food resources, and damaging coastal ecosystems. Given that nearly 50% of all plastics are for single use applications, there is a great opportunity to develop solutions that are designed to last the lifetime of use and then harmlessly degrade away under natural conditions. At Sea6 Energy, we have innovated technologies for cultivating red seaweeds at scale and manufacturing value added solutions from them. Seaweeds absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into natural biopolymers which are compostable and marine degradable. Importantly, they have a very low carbon and energy footprint to manufacture biodegradable plastics compared to existing technologies. Red seaweed biomass was processed either via chemical modifications or blending with other natural compounds, to make bioplastic materials. Our patent pending technology allows us to make materials such as straws, sheets, sachets, coated paper sachets, multi-layer films, granules, etc which are functional for their lifetime of use but safely biodegrade afterward. Mechanical properties (tensile strength, load bearing capacity, tear resistance, etc), water interaction properties (hydrophobicity, water solubility, etc), and grease resistance properties were tuned to meet the requirements of specific applications. In addition, heat sealability, printability and biodegradability of the bioplastic materials was also demonstrated especially for single use packaging alternatives for food and non-food applications. Overall, red seaweeds represent a renewable and sustainable feedstock for developing bioplastics solutions.