This New Bioplastic Could Change Manufacturing: All About Sway

The technology behind Sway’s Thermoplastic Seaweed Resin (or TPSea) is ready for growth: it is designed to integrate with most available scaled manufacturing systems. This, coupled with shifting consumer values, increased company commitments to sustainability, and changing legislation, means the market for seaweed bioplastics is heating up.

In fact, in March 2023, President Joe Biden announced a plan to replace at least 90% of traditional plastics with bio-based alternatives within twenty years. The White House report states that “an urgent global need exists to rapidly enable a more circular economy for today’s fossil carbon-based polymer production and to source chemical building blocks for tomorrow’s recyclable-by-design plastics from bio-based and waste sources”.

It adds: “The world is on the cusp of an industrial revolution fueled by biotechnology and biomanufacturing.”

Marsh described this as an “incredible signal to the investment community [and] to brands that they should be adopting materials like ours made from seaweed”. She called for more biorefineries, where raw seaweed can be processed to extract the natural polymers, and further federal investment in composting infrastructure.