Algae Packaging

Good News Good Planet

For more delicious news, go to www.GoodNewsGoodPlanet.com, and scroll to bottom for more ways to find the feel good stuff!* INVISIBLE ALGAE PLASTIC When it comes to food packaging, single use plastics have become so normal they’re almost invisible. Lettuce in plastic boxes, cookies in plastic trays, and bread in plastic bags are just some of the everyday items that rely on plastic packaging to make it from production to your kitchen table. What if there was a way these one-time plastics could literally disappear? Margarita Talep, a Chilean based designer, made that her mission when she began experimenting with making algae based bioplastic. It made no sense to her that materials that we use so briefly should be so durably constructed that it takes decades to get rid of them. Talep has created algae-based plastics that dissipate in the ocean and only take 4 months maximum to completely biodegrade. She uses agar, a compound commonly used in food preservation or as a thickening agent to sauces as the base of her packaging solution. By boiling the agar out of red seaweed and then mixing it with water as a plasticizer, this innovative substance cools into a version of thin paper or plastic that is 100% food-safe and can be molded into all kinds of versatile shapes. Keeping it completely earth friendly, Talep uses only vegetables like cabbage, carrots and beets, to color-tint the packaging so that every ingredient in her bioplastics are all-natural. Altering the amount of agar to water ratio cans create thicker plastics that can act as trays for products to sit in, or thinner materials that can be used as bags for dry goods. Talep insists that her container contribution to sustainability is only the tip of the iceberg. She is adamant that bioplastics must also be manufactured ethically to feel the full effect of this re-packaging revolution. Fortunately she is not alone, but part of a growing wave of innovative designers and makers rethinking the daily items that we rarely think about. #### *Hungry for more of the Good Stuff? Search "Good News Good Planet" on YouTube, Instagram, Patreon, Alexa and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.