Imitation caviar invented in the 1930s might present the resolution to plastic air pollution, claims Pierre Paslier, CEO of London-based packaging firm Notpla. He found the low-cost meals different, invented by Unilever and made utilizing seaweed, after quitting his job as a packaging engineer at L’Oréal.
With cofounder and co-CEO Rodrigo García González, Paslier and Notpla have prolonged the thought, taking a protein created from seaweed and creating packaging for tender drinks, quick meals, laundry detergent, and cosmetics, amongst different issues. They’re additionally branching out into cutlery and paper.
“Seaweed grows quickly and needs no fresh water, land, or fertilizer,” Paslier explains. “It captures carbon and makes the surrounding waters less acidic. Some species of seaweed can grow up to a meter a day.” Best of all, he says, packaging created from seaweed is totally biodegradable as a result of it’s totally nature-based.
Paslier famous a tremendous coincidence—Alexander Parkes invented the first plastic in Hackney Wick, the identical a part of East London that, 100 years later, Notpla calls residence. Since Parkes’ first invention, waste plastic—particularly tiny particles often called microplastics, which take lots of or 1000’s of years to break down into innocent molecules—has been wreaking havoc in ecosystems throughout the world.
Plastic air pollution is proving particularly damaging in the marine atmosphere, the place tiny beads of plastic are lethal to the very important microorganisms that make up plankton and which sequester 30 p.c of our carbon emissions, “without us having to build any new fancy technologies,” Paslier says.
Notpla’s plans to change plastic started with a drink container for marathons. This is, in impact, a really giant piece of faux caviar—a small pouch that accommodates juice or water that athletes can pop in their mouths and swallow after they want rehydration. “We wanted to create something that would feel more like fruit; packaging that you could feel comes more from picking something from a tree than off a production line,” he says.
Paslier confirmed photos of two postrace streets—one the place refueling got here in plastic containers and one the place it got here in edible Notpla. The first was affected by plastic bottles; the second fully waste-free.
The subsequent step was takeout meals containers. Even containers we predict are cardboard comprise plastic, he says, as grease from meals would make plain cardboard too soggy. Working with supply firm Just Eat, Notpla has pioneered a alternative for the per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), the so-called “forever chemical” plastics that at present line cardboard takeout containers. It has even discovered a approach to retrofit its resolution into the outdated PFAS plant, so there was no want to construct new factories.
The firm is creating soluble sachets for detergent pods, ice-cream scoops, and even paper packing for cosmetics. And there’s loads of seaweed to experiment with, Paslier factors out. “You don’t realize it’s already available massively at scale,” he says. “It’s in our toothpaste, it’s in our beer, it’s in our reduced-fat products—so there’s an existing infrastructure that we can work with without having to build any additional processes.”
This article seems in the March/April 2024 problem of WIRED UK journal.