Seaweed Packaging! Sway CEO Julia Marsh with a big announcement

https://swaythefuture.com/

Try This new material! 
https://www.ecoenclose.com/resources/sway

How can we make more sustainable packaging using seaweed? 
Will harvesting seaweed hurt our planet? 
What if you could replace your fossil fuel based materials for packaging? 

Check out our sponsor Orora Packaging Solutions 
https://ororapackagingsolutions.com/

https://specright.com/?utm_campaign=2024%20Influencers&utm_source=cory%20connors&utm_content=home%20page 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors

Brodie Vander Dussen: 0:34

and I'm Brody Vanderdusen

Cory Connors: 0:36

and today we're very excited to have our good friend Julia Marsh, the CEO and co founder of Sway on to talk about some very exciting innovations in seaweed packaging and more, we're just thrilled to have you on again. I'm thankful for your time and for your wisdom and for your leadership in the industry. We talked about this a little bit before the recording that, the female leaders in our industry are taking, the reins and doing amazing things. And I'm so impressed with the 2 of you in this call and many others like yourself. So keep up the great work.

Julia Marsh: 1:13

Good to be in good

Brodie Vander Dussen: 1:15

company. well, welcome back to the podcast, Julia. For those who didn't listen to the first one, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what Sway is, and what you're doing over there?

Julia Marsh: 1:25

I'm Julia. I'm the CEO and co founder of Sway, and we're a materials company based in the Bay Area in California. My dream is that everyday materials can replenish the planet, and the most tactile, most common materials we interface with is, On a daily basis is packaging. And so, as a designer and a packaging designer prior to starting Sway, I thought, I've got some real opportunity here to embed goodness into the materials that we interface with every day by using the principles of, regenerative design and. Looking at the circular economy, the third pillar says we've got to regenerate nature. We need to give back. And the materials that, can really embody that principle, include seaweed and mycelium and agricultural waste. And a lot of the other amazing companies that have been featured on this podcast embody that principle. But I really think seaweed takes the cake. So as a designer, trying to create this. generous replacement for plastic packaging, seaweed became the central thesis and its way we use seaweed to replace really common types of packaging like poly bags, pouches, wrappers, retail bags, mailers, that don't have a recyclable end of life, or maybe there's not a good reusable solution and a compostable bag made from seaweed fits right in and checks a lot of boxes along the way.

Cory Connors: 3:00

Yeah, it does. Absolutely. I want to give a shout out to our coworker, Justine Chang. I was having a conversation with her about this, and she said, Corey, what if we're looking at the wrong forest? And I said, Oh, and she was referring to the seaweed forest in the water. And it just, it shocked me. wow, well said Justine. but I wanted to ask you, what was the impetus for seaweed? Why, what drew you that way?

Julia Marsh: 3:29

Seaweed is incredibly abundant. It grows on every coastline in the world. There is an underwater forest, so Justine's right, roughly equivalent to the Amazon rainforest in terms of its size and how it contributes to biodiversity and habitat and sequestering carbon. But there's also a seaweed industry. So just as there's responsibly managed land forests that supply. feedstock for paper. There's also responsibly managed seaweed farms that can serve as a feedstock for biomaterials. And what drew me to them is that they are very low resource intensive. They don't need fresh water growing in the ocean. Don't need food. They're just growing in the ocean. they feed on sunlight and carbon, and then they're, they actively improve the ocean health. So they're cycling excess nutrients. They're sequestering carbon. They're creating nearly every other breath that we take. So the more seaweed you have, the healthier the ocean is.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 4:32

Wow. Incredible. Wow. That statistic of like every, I've heard you say that before of almost every breath that we take is, attributed to seaweed or to the innovations in the process of seaweed. And I think that we get lost in that or just plants in general. I think we take such, if it's not, you don't see it, you don't think about it. And I think that seaweeds are such a great example of. innovative ways we should be thinking about it, but it's so much more important than just packaging.

Julia Marsh: 5:02

Every other breath that you take comes from the ocean. So to be super accurate, it's technically algae, all algae. But macroalgae, seaweed, represents a significant chunk of that overall algae. And a fact that I find fascinating is, do you guys think, this is a leading question, but do you think that there are more, plants on the land or seaweed in the ocean?

Brodie Vander Dussen: 5:25

Before this question, I would have said plants on land, but now I feel like I should pick seaweed in the ocean.

Julia Marsh: 5:31

There's more seaweed in the ocean than there are plants on land. It's wild. So, so while we are walking, above the water, it's really good to imagine just what's under the water. The ocean surface that there's this whole diverse set of species of seaweed, 10, 000 plus species that are creating this oxygen, that are creating this habitat. They're doing all this good just by growing. And then our mission is to work with responsibly cultivated seaweed and take the natural polymers out of them. And in that way, you're supporting ocean health just by cultivating the material, and then you're also helping solve an issue that really directly impacts ocean health, which is plastic.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 6:16

Absolutely. I had actually, I was telling somebody about how cool seaweed is and how, we really need to be thinking about it on a greater scale. And the person I was talking to, I forget their name, which is good for them, because they said, they said, well, what if, why are we taking all the seaweed out of the ocean? As if like, what you're talking about would be taking out majority of the seaweed and if we, grow to scale. And I think I didn't really have a great answer for that other than that's not how it works. and that I know that they're working with, indigenous communities to help like their economies. And this is bigger than just that, but I'm really glad I'm going to, hopefully I do remember their names so I can go back and be like, This we're touching a little bit of all the seaweed. yeah, so one

Julia Marsh: 7:04

of our most frequently asked questions. So just to clarify, if anyone's curious, we're not ripping seaweed out of the ocean. There is over 100 million metric tons of seaweed just naturally growing wild in the ocean. And then separate from that, there is a seaweed economy, just dedicated to farming seaweed that's 35. And a million metric tons annually. And that's what we're sourcing from. So yeah, we can absolutely work responsibly with the ocean and with wild harvests, but the way that Sway primarily sources material is from farms. So we're only adding more to the ocean, not less.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 7:42

that's really great. I'm glad I will, I'm going to take that note and be able to answer that question better next time. I think part of the next questions that come from that, including, well, we don't want to take all of the seaweed is, how do you really scale this to be as big of, we, whereas it's a great replacement for plastic, like you said, in a lot of areas. So how do we scale it To combat the greater plastic crisis.

Julia Marsh: 8:10

Got to design for existing infrastructure. From the beginning, the criteria that we embedded into our business plan was, we want to make it from seaweed, the super generous feedstock, we've got to design it for scale, and it's got to return to nature after it's used. And so that scale piece is the second big focus. and something I'm really proud of is the Sway team over the past three and a half years, almost four years that we've existed, developed a way to make seaweed melt. And to flow in existing plastic manufacturing. So we have this patented pellet. They call it thermoplastic seaweed, or TPC. The packaging people will get the little nod to TPS. and it like TPS, melts and flows on its own. It can be extruded into its own. Formats, or you can blend it together with other compostable polymers to create all different types of products. So we're really proud of this thermoplastic seaweed because it means that we can work with legacy industry and we can achieve that big scale and that big impact we want.

Cory Connors: 9:14

That's excellent. So exciting. I'm just thrilled to be a part of this just by telling people about it. so, you must be. Like jumping out of bed every day, just excited to, Hey, here we go. Let's solve some more problems. I've seen a few of your innovations. you're doing a great job with social media, posting about some of your innovative designs and concepts and, even, real projects that are out in the industry. Can you tell us a few of the industries that you're focusing this on?

Julia Marsh: 9:44

We started with a focus on, windows, plastic windows. This is such a pesky category of plastic where oftentimes you need to see the product that's inside the package. You want to know that it's not broken or that it's intact or how, how many cookies are in the box or that you're, your Barbie hair is in place or whatever it is. So it's a type of plastic. I. In general, I think we can innovate away from, but where it is needed, shouldn't it be made from biology and disappear after it's used. So we've been, offering stock window boxes through our partners at EcoEnclose. And then we've also been working on all kinds of really fun, custom, window boxes made with our seaweed film called First Wave. And this material is certified TUV. Austria home and industrially compostable. It's 100 percent bio based and and it's a great fully bio based solution for a lot of people. So that was the first thing that we launched and scaled.

Cory Connors: 10:40

That's great. And this window, and when you say windows, some people might think house windows, but we're talking about, we're talking about windows in a box that you can see through. So you can see the product like a, a pasta box. It's very common in America. we've spoken to the people at the pasta companies. Why don't you remove the windows? And it's because Americans want to see what they're buying. And, that's okay, but, maybe we'll get over that someday. I hope we get

Julia Marsh: 11:05

over that someday, but while we still need to see our pasta,

Cory Connors: 11:08

we gotta see the, we need

Julia Marsh: 11:10

a plastic free solution because those little windows are not getting recycled. A hundred percent of them are ending up as pollution. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 11:16

Right. And they disrupt the recycling process and can even make the paperboard, that is, that they're attached to waste. Which is terrible because your window means that the box can be totally recycled. And easily, and curbside, and also compostable, and it's all the things that you need it to be. It's about

Julia Marsh: 11:41

creating, yeah, optionality. It's like we want, in a, at a time when, there is a lot of, differences in accessibility for, What you do with your waste. We want it to not be the case that we're creating waste. We want to be treating these materials as natural resources, and we want to increase the likelihood that the materials are going to be recovered. So if we can improve the recyclability of material or improve the likelihood it gets composted and doesn't go to landfill, we feel like that's a win.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 12:10

that's amazing. That's huge. Can you tell us a little bit more about the Sway Innovation Coalition? What led you to partner with fashion brands and tell us a little bit more about what this entails.

Julia Marsh: 12:21

So glad you asked Brodie. This is hot off the press. since our inception, Sway has always dreamed of working really closely with, respected brands that are committed to responsible sourcing in their products. But haven't been able to necessarily find a responsible packaging solution and to create a band, a coalition of them who would test our materials in the real world with their customers and gather lots of valuable feedback and basically completely de risk our products in the real world so that when we. reach scale, we have a product that we know works. And I'm so proud to share that we've achieved that dream. We're working together with Prana, Faraday, Florence, and Alex Crane, who are all fashion or outdoor gear brands, who are officially using Sway, Poly bags, to package a variety of different fashion products. It looks like this. and for those who can't see, holding a bag made from Sway's TPC Flex material, it's printed with algae ink. This is a seaweed based home and industrially compostable poly bag that It creates that biological circularity that we've been talking about. It's really durable. It's protective. It's lightweight. It does all the jobs that you need a polybag to do and it's, protecting clothing during shipment. There's no dust or scratches. And then while it performs like plastic, it doesn't last forever. It returns to nature after it's been used. So we're really proud of this and it just, this news just came out.

Cory Connors: 14:01

Congratulations. That's so awesome. and you can see through it. The problem we've had with this innovation is, no, and I'm serious, that's been the problem with replacing polybacs. And low density polyethylene is, as we know, very clear, but it's made from fossil fuels. And so what you've offered is a new material that is Easily compostable, but certainly, less abrasive to the planet. And, that, that is an incredible feat. I would like to know. what's the response been from consumers to this new kind of packaging? Are people asking for it? Are you getting pull from the market?

Julia Marsh: 14:42

Sway and my team really have this desire to pull down the barriers between material innovator and the individual who receives the material. Like, I think so often material innovation seems like this ambiguous thing that happens in a lab somewhere and you don't really know the people who are doing it, or what's going on. And at a time when there's so much confusion around materials, I think it's really important to yeah, open up the door, peel back the, I don't know. the curtain and just, yeah, what am I feeling back? I was like the lid or the

Brodie Vander Dussen: 15:20

window in the

Julia Marsh: 15:20

car, opening the window, to meet the people who are doing the innovation and to share our intentions and our dreams and showing that it's an imperfect process. So we've had a really public facing presence. We really love Instagram. community there is incredible. And it's large enough now that it's not necessarily only people who come from, the environmental movement. I think we've reached a broader audience. So when we're sharing our progress on social media, we get a ton of feedback and questions and there's been an enormously positive response. People feel like they are grossed out by plastic. They don't want to receive it in the mail all the time. And they want to feel good about their shopping experiences. It's not fair that you spend 70 on a gorgeous sweater that was made with the finest wool from a happy sheep that lived somewhere, but then it comes in a plastic bag. So we're trying to, yeah, definitely address. Thanks. What we think people want and we're going to continue to improve the product over time based on that feedback.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 16:26

I love that. I love the idea of a happy sheep somewhere donating. It's coat to make a very beautiful sweater. I think that's a, it's a, I love the image of that. I hope it's a happy sheep. Let's decide that it's going to be a happy sheep. but I think that it's a, like you mentioned, it's a contrast, right? Of an experience where, the purchase you're making reflects a values that packaging doesn't necessarily meet. And I think that gap is, Is critical. And I think that I'm so excited about this innovation because I really think that's going to help come together for brands like that, that have strong values with their products and all of this to be able to have a packaging solution that encompasses that to really come forth and have the customer experience, the buying experience, the unboxing experience, which is really big and popular, And really important as commerce is moving digital, it needs to be cohesive. And I think that these kinds of solutions really help brands. It's, it adds a lot of value, where the current solutions, I think in some ways do detract. I'm curious if you've had any, Common misconceptions when it comes to sustainable packaging, specifically around seaweed, maybe we talked about it earlier of, you taking out all of the seaweed of the ocean. is there anything else that you've come across of people getting confused or just misinformed and how have you addressed that?

Julia Marsh: 18:00

The compostability piece is not. something that everyone's familiar with. And it is really important to distinguish these materials are designed for a home or a backyard compost or an industrial compost or commercial compost. They're not to be recycled. And that is really important. We're responsible to do that education to help people understand if they don't compost, these are your options. And we try to create a lot of visibility on our website and on our social media about what we're doing. Oh, you don't compost? Well, here are like some really accessible ways that you can do in your home, even if you live in a city. Or these are some resources for local composters who would accept our material. I think that's the biggest bucket. but our goal is that more people are composting. I think composting is inevitable as a mainstream behavior. Just as recycling for things like aluminum and paper is a mainstream behavior, and we're seeing it pop up in public places in the airport, on schools, and increasingly I think people will be doing it in their homes. So, I feel, yeah, a responsibility to educate about our products, and then also to push for the composting movement because there's no reason that any organic waste should be going to landfill.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 19:13

I think that's amazing. I think the education piece is. Critical. I think sometimes people think sustainable packaging is synonymous to recycling or recyclable. and I think that's important, but it is such a subsection of the greater mission. So I think that education piece to explain to consumers who maybe don't care about sustainable packaging, but really like that happy sheep sweater. I think That's really important. I think it's really cool what you guys are doing. Thank you.

Cory Connors: 19:46

Yeah, good work, Julia. Thank you so much for being on again. We really appreciate your wisdom and your mission. We support you. Anything else that you wanted to tell us before we call this show?

Julia Marsh: 19:57

If you run a small business, or you are representing a larger business, We've got free samples available. You can go to EcoClose. com and you can order samples of this new packaging that's being offered via Sway. if you're interested in seaweed or to try a compostable solution, it can be yours today.

Brodie Vander Dussen: 20:19

How do people get in contact with you? How do people order that? That's amazing.

Julia Marsh: 20:24

You can go to SwayTheFuture. com slash pilot. You can follow us at Sway the Future, or you can go to our partner Eco Enclose's website, ecoenclose. com, and look for their seaweed offering. we've got lots of great information about our products, how we've been thoughtful in scaling the solution, and then you can be a part of the movement. Love it. Sign me up.

Cory Connors: 20:47

Good job. Yeah. Nice work, everybody. Thank you so much, Julia. I really appreciate your wisdom.

Julia Marsh: 20:52

Thanks, Corey. Thanks, Brody.