OUR PROCESS IS LED BY REGENERATION
Regeneration goes beyond the call for sustainability, encouraging us to design not simply to avoid harm, but to restore and replenish our aching planet.
While petroleum plastic contributes to climate change at every step of its lifecycle, Sway’s flexible packaging solution is made with process in mind. We work to undo the harms of plastic pollution everywhere, from the ocean to your backyard. Rather than seeing the ocean only as a site of degradation, we believe an answer to our biggest climate challenges — on land and at sea — has been underwater all along.
THE SOURCE
Seaweed cultivation is an act of environmental stewardship.
As one of our planet’s most vibrant ecosystems, seaweed forests provide vital services both above and underwater.
Seaweed forests encourage marine biodiversity as a popular breeding site and a hunting ground for endangered apex predators. They are home to incomparable ocean life, from tiny microorganisms to cuttlefish, grey whales, sea lions, and pelicans.
Seaweed also acts as the ocean’s built-in filtration system, mitigating ocean acidification caused by the fossil fuel industry. That filtration occurs above water too!
Seaweed can sequester up to 20 times more carbon than land forests.
If just 9 percent of the ocean’s surface was covered in seaweed farms and forests, it would filter the entire planet’s annual carbon emissions.
Seaweed also grows up to 60 times faster than other land based crops. Because of this unrivaled growth rate, seaweed cultivation is just like a haircut: the crop is merely trimmed, preserving the component needed for regrowth, with no harm done to the larger ecosystem.
THE HARVEST
Sway partners with North and South American communities who have been most affected by global overfishing and changing ecologies.
The seaweed industry has the power to uplift coastal populations that have been sidelined in climate crisis discourse, despite bearing the brunt of its damages.
The consequences of rising tides and temperatures, food scarcity, and landscape degradation fall unevenly upon the populations least responsible for it.
The American seaweed industry remains small and underdeveloped, but through our supply chain we aim to engage seaweed cultivators as agents in the fight against climate change through restorative and empowering agricultural practices.
Cultivating seaweed in the ocean is inexpensive, requires no pesticides or fertilizers, and demands little equipment.
Farming seaweed distinguishes Sway from bioplastic feedstocks that cause environmental harm. Corn, potatoes, and sugarcane depend on “Big Ag,” an agricultural system that steamrolls over smallholder farmers in the United States and abroad, and ultimately suffocates them out of the market.
This practice is also a major contributor to climate change that rivals even the fossil fuel industry. While Big Ag harms people and the planet, Sway is expanding the healing, carbon-negative power of the seaweed industry.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Big Plastic is hindered by scale and old ways of thinking. Sway moves in response to the rhythm of these mechanical systems, integrating seamlessly into existing machinery.
Converting seaweed requires less energy and water input, and emits less carbon than petroleum, thus saving converters and their clients money.
After our seaweed is harvested, it is dried in open air under the heat of the sun. In this form, it can be refined and converted into our flexible packaging solution that outshines petroleum plastic. We ensure that brands don’t need to choose between doing well and doing “good.”
Plastics are manufactured in a rigid system that has been fine-tuned for efficiency.
Rather than competing against this infrastructure, our material works within existing machinery. This is part of our effort to integrate regenerative practices throughout scaled value chains. Adopting Sway materials benefits both business and the environment.
END OF LIFE
By increasing access to regeneration, we make conscious consumerism available to more people.
Sway is developing carbon-negative, home-compostable, guilt-free packaging solutions for large corporations and small businesses alike.
Rather than contributing to the plastic problem, our material brings positive climate action right into your shopping cart.
As part of our commitment to the pillars of the Circular Economy, we’re creating packaging solutions that are reusable, too. By rethinking traditional packaging, we are able to implement tools for reuse including resealability, innovative labeling, and novel structure.
Our plastic replacement is both reusable and home-compostable.
When our seaweed-based packaging material reaches the end of its life, it can be home-composted in your backyard — just like an orange peel!
Even if it finds its way into the landfill, fear not: This material will break down naturally and without toxins no matter where it lands.
Sway comes from the ocean and ends in healthy soil... but not without doing a whole lot of good along the way!
