EP181. Seaweed magic - from marine waste to cosmetic perfection

Seaweed can be amazing. We eat it, it's used in medicine, it's used as fuel, we use it as fertilizer. It provides vital nutrients to coastal ecosystems. It's a food source and a habitat for many organisms. And you know what? I even recorded an episode earlier this year on how I think algae can play an amazing role in sustainable beauty through carbon sequestration. But sometimes, as with all things related to human activity, things can go too far. So take the example of sargassum for instance, which is a brown seaweed found predominantly in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. And every year, sargassum causes massive algal blooms which bring with it sizable ecological problems. The culprit here is of course, not the seaweed. The culprit, as usual, is humanity pouring massive amounts of nutrients into the ocean from wide scale, unsustainable farming practices which then lead to these seaweed blooms. But with every challenge comes an opportunity. In 2020, a team of US based entrepreneurs decided to tackle the Sargassum bloom head on by seeing what consumer products they could make from it. They spent lockdown developing a process for extracting the chemical compounds from the sargassum seaweed and they moved into production in 2021. And one of those cosmetic products turned out to be a cosmetic emulsifier, which has got everyone in the beauty industry talking about its huge potential. So if you want to find out all about one of the hottest new functional ingredients on the market made out of seaweed, how cool is that? Settle in for this podcast episode. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make or sell your green beauty formulations. In my weekly episodes, I explore the sustainability of the beauty industry and encourage you to join me in changing the industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallnayer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school, Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode, I am joined by Jeff Chapin, the CEO and founder of CarbonWave, the world's leading developer of ultra regenerative plant based advanced biomaterials. From seaweed, the company transforms sargassum Seaweed, a resource long considered waste, which doesn't need land or other inputs to grow into biomaterials that can replace petroleum products or other harmful industrial inputs. In addition to Carbon Wave, Jeff also serves as a board member at E2 and Prime Coalition. He previously worked at Sea Change and is a veteran company builder in the green economy. He has plenty of experience starting and leading businesses in the home energy efficiency and solar space, as well as low energy desalination. Hi Jeff, how are you doing today?

Great. I'm wonderful. Thanks for having me.

Lorraine, I am thrilled that you're here. I find what you do so fascinating. I can't wait to get into this. So let's start right at the top. Can you please start us off by introducing yourself and carbonwave?

Sure. My name is Jeff Chapin. I'm the co founder of Carbon Wave along with Ben Ellis. We are Carbon Wave. We established in order to upcycle the largest seaweed bloom on the planet into valuable materials.

That's an incredible objective and an incredible mission statement. So let's talk about this seaweed bloom. You've created your business based around a seaweed, what kind of seaweed and where's it found?

Right. And most people didn't know about this type of seaweed until it really hit the shores of the United States in Florida. It's called Sargassum. It's been around for a long time in the, to the east of the United States in what is known as the Sargasso Sea. And it had just for centuries been there. What's happened recently though, starting around 2010, it started to escape that gyre, that sea. And what happened is it started moving south. The reason why it started to get traction moving south is that there's a lot of, as the Amazon forests have been converted into farmland, a lot more fertilizer has been applied to the farmlands in the Amazon basin and Brazil and the forests in general. So as the Amazon river has really taken the runoff from all of that fertilizer, it's run into the, into the Atlantic and really provided a fuel source, a ton of nutrients. And this Sargassum has sort of taken advantage of that. And in the years since it's become a massive bloom where out of control really an invasive species in a sense that has gone beyond its boundaries. And now as the news media has recently seen, it's become a 5,000 mile long bloom of sargassum and it floats on the ocean's surface, it absorbs the nitrogen and, and other nutrients that are in the ocean. There and it, but it just happens to be a very efficient growing seaweed. It has a high carbon to nitrogen fixation ratio, meaning it'll pull down a lot of carbon for every molecule of nitrogen that it absorbs. It'll double in size every 12 to 18 days. Oh, my goodness. And it's a huge source of biomass. And what's happened now is, is it really. It's. It's 30 to 50 million tons every year that occurs, depending on which estimates you, you read. But it's become, it's, it's, it's a nice. It's helpful to the ocean in a way. The Sargassum, right? I mean, it's helping the ocean to heal. We see it as. This is the way the ocean is trying to heal itself from having too much nutrient runoff, having the temperatures being too warm in the ocean, which we all know contributes to blooms. And when the upper levels of the ocean are so warm, there's less overturning of the ocean, so colder water doesn't come up as easily. And this can be somewhat of a runaway cycle. So what we've seen is every year, more or less, this has become more and more of a problem as more exists every year and it kind of diminishes in the winter. But there are more colonies now that are exploding each spring and they're exploding earlier in the spring. And so the season of this used to be in the summers. Now it's really February through November. So it's become a real problem when it hits the ocean, when it hits the land in the islands in the Caribbean and Mexico and Belize, which are sort of the backstop for it as it floats from the east to the west. And so as it floats and it grows when it hits these, it's helpful in the ocean. It's actually great. It provides a little bit of healing. It provides places for microbes and fish to live and crab, etc. Low crab. But then when it gets to shore, it becomes an ecological nightmare. It just, it hurts the reefs, it leaks arsenic that it accumulated in the ocean into the water supplies, kills tens of thousands of fish by just suffocating the bays. So we wanted to try to address that and stop it from leaking methane into the atmosphere. When it rots, it creates methane. And that's been a big driver of our mission, is to stop that methanogenesis, the creation of the methane, because that's just accelerating this whole climate problem in the first place.

Yes. Wow. Fascinating how one environmental impact can cause such an enormous other one that I'm guessing most people have probably not even heard of before. Is this something that people are really aware of?

They are certainly aware in the Caribbean. Right. So this has been, you know, this is something that hurts tourism 25 to 35%. Right. And it's just a scourge on the beaches. And you can look on social media and see how people's vacations can be ruined, but also how it more importantly hurts the local economies and the ecosystems. But yes, people haven't beyond the Caribbean, it really hasn't been known. We've had to, over the last three years, really explain it to a lot of people and show them videos of it, et cetera, because it just hasn't gotten out of the Caribbean. But now, as it attacks Florida, of course, in quotes, or it got close to Florida, everyone's been a lot more aware of it and we get a lot of inquiries saying, how do we deal with this?

Yeah, I'm sure you do. So you and your business partner suddenly one day woke up with the idea to go and tackle the world's largest seaweed bloom. How did this all come about?

Yes, so we, we had looked at other seaweed operations, of course, and you've referenced them in past episodes where. Look, let's think about kelp and other seaweeds. Can that play a role in both drawing down carbon from the ocean and the air? And how do you scale that up? When we looked at the methods that were being developed on how to grow kelp, two problems became very clear with kelp and other seaweeds. One is it's very hard to scale that. You're generally always working near shore. You're competing with other use cases. There are only limited places where the kelp can both see the sunlight attach to something down below a substrate or rocks or whatever, and have enough nutrient flow to support its growth. And that's very hard to scale up. And if you try to do it elsewhere, it can be very expensive. If you do it, say, in the middle of the ocean, you've got to have a whole infrastructure to hold it and upwell water. We then turned our eyes towards Sargassum because it was causing. It was not just already being created by the ocean naturally, but it was causing such harm to the islands and the economies and people and ecosystems and the reefs. And so we just said, well, why isn't anyone using that? We looked into why. What's the. One of the problems with Sargassum? Why wouldn't we just use that? And there are reasons and good reasons why people don't three of them. Primarily one, it was very seasonal, although that's changing now. It's almost all year round. Second, it's a very hard seaweed to deal with. It has arsenic in it. So anything that has arsenic, you've got to figure out how to get rid of that, but leave the good things and that is a big challenge. And third, to get sort of the nutrients out of it or the very valuable biomaterials out of it that people traditionally get from seaweeds. The traditional processes do not work on sargassum. So for instance, a long chain polymer and biomaterial that you need for emulsifiers, it's very hard to get those out without breaking them down too much using the traditional hot press process and some harsh chemicals that it didn't work on sargassum, so no one was really using it. And so we had, we spent Covid figuring out how to do that extraction and we've, we got lucky, we made it work. We had a great female led stem team in Puerto Rico that solved these problems and then we filed an IP process on it last year.

Congratulations. I love it. I mean, you've created such a unique business model here and I find that in itself fascinating, but the ingredient itself is of course what really drives everything. So tell me, what have you made from sargassum so far? You've already talked about emulsifiers. We're going to come to that in a bit more detail in a minute. But what is the range that CarbonWave currently offers?

Another thing we. So we did a couple of products we've made. One is a biosimulant fertilizer for crops which we're very excited about. When we work with the resorts in the Cancun region, Quintana Roo region of Mexico, there's taking up 74% of this hits their shores. If it's going to hit shores, likely it'll be in Mexico. So we work there with the hotels. We take the seaweed to our processing plant and we extract the liquid fraction from it. Literally press the liquid out and we remove the arsenic but leave all the good things in there. And we've managed with that liquid fraction, we've managed to create a product that can be applied to crops, both fruits and veggies, but also row crops cost effectively that increases yield of those products. So with one major grower we got 12 and a half percent increase in yield on barley. And it's a. And it's a relatively inexpensive product because very little of it goes a long way. And so we've managed to get a 12x return on a row crop, which typically row crops like cotton, barley, wheat, et cetera, biosimilars aren't used on those because they tend to be too expensive relative to the yield. But our yield is sufficient with little bit of product and the cost is low enough that this is really starting to excite the row crop industries. And so we're working with groups in Mexico, around the world and in the US on how to use this for increasing yield in a world where climate change is threatening yields of crops. We see this, the circular aspect is we took the nitrogen running out of the Amazon basin from those farmlands and in a way returned it to the plants to increase yield and reuse some of that nutrient in a two step process. It's been a fabulous experience to try to help yields around the world and with large corporate growers as well as growers in Mexico.

Yeah, so you've got a biofertilizer. What else have you got in development at Carbonwave?

So we're working on a bio based leather alternative, which would be we literally part of our extraction process that we filed IP on. We developed a leather that is in development still, but it is a leather alternative that is completely bio based and natural. We're looking at ways to make it stronger and to work with it, but that we anticipate possibly launching that by the end of this year, early next year. The next things we're looking at are twofold in sort of our R and D process. One is we're looking at 3D printing with Sargassum. So when it turns out when you dry the pulp that's left over, it behaves a lot like sand. And you can 3D print with certain modifications and IP, we're working with a partner called Marvel Labs looking at how we can do that and 3D print things like sinks and faucets and artwork, which would be a fascinating reuse of all that pulp and biomaterial in a way that again doesn't allow it to rot on the beach, avoids the methane production. And we are proud to have the first gold standard certification for carbon credits for the avoidance of methane based on us processing that seaweed instead of letting it rot. And the last thing we're looking at is plastics and biofuels. So how do we take the Sargassum pulp, turn it into an input product to plastics and maybe biofuels? So we're excited by these larger use cases and what it could mean for the dealing with the problem at large scale across The Caribbean.

It's so incredibly versatile, this seaweed that you're using. It's amazing what you're managing to create out of it. How much do you harvest at the moment?

Oh, we'll do tens of thousands of tons throughout the year. And we could do more, frankly. It's just we help these hotels and resorts deal with this problem. It could be hundreds of thousands of tons of. We're just ramping up. We're really proud to be the first company that is permitted in Mexico to collect this and work with resorts to bring it to use cases as socially responsible way as possible, protecting the beaches, et cetera. We worked with the Mexican government to ensure that we were doing it correctly and help inform the certification standards. So the supply is in the hundreds of thousands of tons of. And of course, much more than that if you were to collect it in the open ocean. But we are working on only seaweed that is about to hit the shores and therefore cause ecological disaster.

The thing I love about your business model as well is of course you're being paid at times to take this away, aren't you? And I'm sure many of the business owners listening to this podcast at the moment will be thinking, oh my goodness, no one ever pays me to come and get my raw materials. That's just not how business works. So that must be a nice side effect as well.

We do love that the ocean's creating it for us and growing it for us in a sense, and that our hotel partners trust us to take it. They want to be doing something productive with it. They certainly don't want to be putting it in landfill or worse, burying it in the beach or the rainforest where we know it's creating such ecological harm. And so what we've heard from our partners is that they're glad that someone is doing something productive with it and turn upcycling it, upcycling it into products of three different products, at least from one given ton of it. Right. We can make the biostimulant for crops, we can make the emulsifier and we can make the bio leather alternative all from use basically all the seaweed when we produce it from one ton. So yes, we're lucky to have that. We felt like that would be an advantage. We don't always anticipate over the years that we'll get paid for it, but maybe because it's hard to do anything with. So we'll see.

Absolutely. So let's talk about the emulsifier because obviously this is the green beauty Conversations podcast. So we wanted to talk about the cosmetic emulsifier that you've made. So what have you made? What is it?

We're really excited and thanks for bringing us on. I love the fact that you're, you're helping your, your listeners and your clients work on something that is marine based. And so what we've developed is the first, the world's first seaweed based cosmetic emulsifier. So a marine based upcycled product that, that works as a functional ingredient, of course, which is, you know, you often hear of other methods of seaweeds being used and other benefits from seaweed. This is the first time an emulsifier has been created that is as a functional ingredient, can be used from seaweed in cosmetics. And so we're really excited about it. It's all natural, it's an OW emulsifier, it's non toxic, it's renewable, using renewable resources, of course, non gmo, fossil free. And it regenerates the health of the climate in the ocean as we use it. So we're really excited to, as we think about it, really find the beauty in Sargassum. That's what we're focused on. We've gone through all the certifications that we need. It's PEG free, it's Inka certified, Cosmos Approved, verified by EcoCert and even comes with the, the idea that the gold standard is, has certified that this is preventing methane from entering the atmosphere. So in addition to dressing addressing all the other sustainable development goals, we also have the methane avoidance which is really important on the climate fight, that we not release methane which is, you know, up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Yeah. This is so exciting because I know that many of the listeners of this podcast will be formulators as well and they'll be thinking, oh my goodness. Most of the natural emulsifiers that I've been buying over the years have been derived from palm oil or there are always synthetic components to them as well. And all of a sudden you've created something here that is sustainable, renewable, all of the things you said. Absolutely incredible. So how did the beauty industry respond when you first launched your seaweed derived emulsifier?

You know, we really didn't know what to expect because, you know, we launched it more than about a year and a quarter ago. We were at the in cosmetics show. I know you were there recently. And, and when we launched it a year ago at that show, we had a booth that was frankly a little too small for what we were ended up happening. That was sort of Our big launch and at Incause Global we were thrilled with the response. We came away with over 650 leads. The line, we got media coverage because the line leading to the booth, we didn't have enough people there to field the number of inquiries. So there was actually a line around the corner that attracted some media attention. I think you said you visited our booth and verify that. So that's been exciting. And we've continued to go to the different in cars and other events. Each time we come away with hundreds of leads. And so now we're in testing with about 140 to 160 different companies, all in different phases of assessment and use cases. But the good thing is, as all these groups have tested it, they have verified that it does work across a range of ph from about three and a half to nine. It does emulsify oils up to 25%. Typically they're using three to six percent in the product. There doesn't always need CO emulsifiers and it doesn't need them. It works in hot and cold processes. They've told us.

Wow.

And mostly they've said they really like the silky silicon like feel of it. So as it, as it, as you rub it in your fingers, you can really tell it's, it's, it is almost like silicon and silky. It's, it's, it's got a very nice feel to it. And then one thing we didn't anticipate was it actually has a proven moisturizing effect. We didn't know this would happen. But it does have a moisturizing effect that is stronger than some of the other natural and synthetic emulsifiers that we were tested against. So we've got a lot of groups that are looking at how to bring this into their products or what, you know, and have gone through the initial functional testing of it. And now a lot of them are thinking about, all right, which products we want to do this with. We've seen real strength in sunscreen. So one of the things it happens to work well in sunscreen, it has compatibility with the natural pigments that are in that, the mineral pigments, which has been, as you know, a challenging use case. So it's been great. It's always a long sales cycle, you know, with groups. They have to really put it through the testing. But we've fortunately gotten through that and now it's about, we've had enough demand that we can't keep up with it. So we're building a large scale plant near our facilities in Puerto Rico, in Carolina Puerto Rico. So we're really excited to get that plant launched by the end of the year.

Wow. All very exciting. First of all, I just want to say I'm not surprised about the moisturizing effect because you always hear these anecdotal stories, don't you, of people who work in seaweed aquaculture and farms who walk away with really soft hands. So that makes perfect sense, actually.

There you go.

Can we expect the first products to hit the market with the carbon wave emulsifier in it, or are they already out there now?

We're glad that they're already out. We've sold in the tons so far. Some customers buy in half a ton, but also we're just. We have a limp. We can only produce so much and we've had a lot of interest. So we're kind of trying to get everybody samples and slightly larger sizes so that they can assess it so that when the plant comes online by the end of the year, people can really know what they want to do with it. But it is absolutely in the marketplace. We've been happy with the response. We're certified and ready to go. Of course, we're still working on China registration process, which is a little bit more challenging, but other than that, we're everywhere.

Amazing. Amazing. And how is the beauty industry promoting? Because I can imagine that they're quite excited about the ingredient that you've created. Are you seeing them mention this in particular in their marketing?

I would say the products themselves as they've been imagining putting them out there. So one client is looking at a hair cream for men, and we didn't think a functional ingredient would attract much attention. Really. You usually don't really talk about that, but it sounds like, for reasons that you've mentioned, like they can avoid palm oil and things and the fossil, so that they've actually. Some of our clients have talked about advertising it on the product, really announcing on the product packaging that this is in there and some of the benefits that it conveys so people can feel good about using it and the other ecological benefits that it's having. So in some cases that's really a big selling point. But not in all, of course. But it's a mix.

It's exciting. I mean, I rarely see functional ingredients promoted on the packaging. So the fact that beauty brands are starting to think about doing this is a real testament to what you've created here and how excited people are about it. Just so, because there are many indie brands listening to this podcast as well. Is your seaweed emulsifier available for indie brands as well. What sort of quantities do you typically sell it in?

It is available for indie brands. We've been conscious of that where we've really wanted to make sure that this isn't just something that, you know, people can. Only large clients can buy. Right. So we've been. We've. As we've developed our network of distributors around the world, we've been. We've been very careful to make one distributor really focused on smaller indie brands in the orders. And I'm glad to say so, it's the one that can really help for smaller orders is simply- ingredients.com simply ingredients.com run by a woman named Valerie George. And simply- ingredients.com is our preferred provider to be able to bring smaller order numbers to market. So that's been a really nice partnership to have because indie brands are really important to us. We really feel like that's a big section of the market that really cares. Right. And so many of them are trying to do this correctly and make something that is moving the industry forward. So we're really excited. And so anyone can reach out to Simply Ingredients.com and access it.

I love that you've specifically made sure that that market segment has access to your emulsifier because it sounds super exciting. A couple more questions before we round up. Given how big the sargassum problem is, do you think this could be a potential source for more cosmetic ingredients in the future?

That's a really interesting question. I think there could be. You know, it's a challenging seaweed, as I've said, to work with in terms of getting out the biomaterial that ends up in the emulsifier. But we think we figured out one way to do it. I'm sure there are others will figure out other ways to do it, and we hope that happens. There are certainly some natural effects that we've also seen in sargassum that we haven't talked about, but because we don't have enough proof behind it. But there's some evidence that it can actually increase SPF a little bit, like, kind of like a little bit related to what you said earlier. But so these are some of the things we're looking at. But I think it's no doubt that when you look at sort of the traditional uses of sargassum in the beauty industry, those are more easily derived from other seaweeds like kelp, et cetera. So this is more of a structural phenomenon that actually has these moisturizing and other benefits that we've been lucky to create with it. But sure, I mean, we believe this. We're looking, as I, as I mentioned, at a range of different products in general from this and we don't pretend to have figured everything out by any stretch. So we hope so because this is a type of seaweed you really want to see utilized versus, you know, crowding out other use cases for the other other seaweeds.

Absolutely. Well, incredibly exciting what you're doing. So I suppose this leads into my final question and you have already alluded to some of this a little bit throughout the interview, but we're what is next for CarbonWave?

Well, we're really excited to help, you know, the crops around the world, as I mentioned, with the biosimulant fertilizer. We're really excited to expand this emulsifier practice and allow this to be used by folks around the world. We'll probably grow the plant beyond what we're doing now. We really want to get the use cases and that utilize large amounts of this in play, whether it's through 3D printing or plastics. And we have been in discussions with large corporates about plastics and conditioning and shampoo bottles, etc. And stop using virgin plastic. That's a key thing for us. But mostly we just want to. Now, now that we've figured out these solutions, we're keen to partner with groups around the Caribbean who are suffering from this problem and share the solutions we have with them in a cooperative way that we can help bring these solutions everywhere. We're not going to build collection plants in every island in the Caribbean that is affected or around. It's been seen as far north as I beef of Spain now. So we want to help, we want to partner with groups. Yeah, I mean it's spreading north just as the fish are moving north as the ocean's warm. Same thing with this. So we just want to make our solutions available to groups around the world that we can partner with to serve the markets and upcycle this product into things that we need. Instead of using petroleum based products in almost every case, we're supplanting petroleum based products. So we do not need to pull this out of the ground and use 60 million year old carbon. Let's use the carbon that is being pulled down today to help address this crisis and heal the oceans as well.

Amazing. Jeff, what you're doing is fantastic. You and your team are trailblazing and it's been a real privilege talking to you today. Thank you so much for joining me. Where can people find out more about you and your work.

Right. So and thank you for the work you're doing. It's a privilege to be here and speaking with you given all you've done. People can find out more@cbalance.com seabalance.com and carbonwave.com, the parent company as well, lists more of what we're doing.

Amazing. We'll include both of those links for the show notes and I can't wait to watch and see what comes next from Carbonwave. So congratulations and all the best with it.

Well, thank you and Sarga AG is our Bryce Simulator and I should mention as well S A R G A G. But it's been such a pleasure and thanks for all your work and I look forward to seeing where this goes with you.

Thank you. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. I bet you want to either buy a cosmetic formulation that contains this emulsifier now or if you're a formulator, I bet you want to try it. So come and tell me what you think. Leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. And if you want to hear more about some of the topics we covered today, please do delve back into the podcast archives. Go and listen to episode 168, in which I talk about four ways that I think algae. In other words, seaweed, you could contribute to sustainable beauty. Jeff already alluded to that episode earlier. Or go and listen to episode 59 in which I interviewed Anna Brightman of Upcircle Beauty, in which we talked about the potential for upcycling ingredients, including waste for skincare formulations. Or episode 79, in which I interviewed Timo von Bargen of Cavallo, the online chemical ingredient platform and search engine, on the potential for sourcing natural ingredients for cosmetics for indie formulators. There is a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. Thank you for joining Geoff and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is. And stay tuned for our next episode. Follow Formula Botanica at FormulaBasic Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter LinkedIn we're everywhere and come and give me a Follow Lorraine D. On Instagram Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.