– All this is made of seaweed, even the box! That’s what the UN’s special adviser on sustainability and safe food Vincent Doumeizel says. He shows a box filled with various things wrapped in packaging. In addition, everything can be eaten. He believes we are looking at something that can help solve the climate crisis; A bubble-like packaging filled with olive oil. If, for example, you use the oil for frying, you can eat the packaging afterwards. He does as he points to. Pour out the oil and take a sip from the container. – Seaweed and kelp give us many opportunities to replace packaging that is not sustainable, he says. The plastic problem We produce around 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. That is almost the same as the weight of the entire world’s population, according to the UN. We humans ingest plastic through the food we eat and the air we breathe. And there is more and more of it. In March this year, the UN adopted a plastic agreement. SEAWEED: There are 450 species of seaweed, kelp and sea grass. Here a small tuft of dark brown, frilly kelp growing on a larger, lighter bunch of kelp. Photo: Gunhild Hjermundrud / news – Now we get a Paris agreement for plastics. This means that we can finally tackle this huge problem, which is that we use an awful lot of plastic. We only use a lot of the plastic once, and a lot of it leaks into nature, into the oceans and into the air, and in the end we end up ingesting it, said Climate and Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide at the time. Doumeizel believes seaweed is a clear solution to this problem, and will help and cut down on the use of plastic. – The technology is there, and we know how to do it. What we need now is to expand this industry and invest in it. Can reverse climate change Seaweed can be used for many things, not just for packaging. Seaweed can be eaten, it can be used as animal feed to reduce methane emissions and it can sequester carbon. Marine plants and algae such as seaweed, kelp and eel grass are important carbon stores. So are sediments, i.e. particles that have sunk to the bottom of the sea, writes WWF – the World Wide Fund for Nature. BAGS: The bag on the left is a regular plastic bag, but the one on the right is made of seaweed. Photo: Anne Skifjeld / news – A lot of carbon is stored in the deep sea, and they can help reverse climate change. So every time you eat seaweed, you contribute to this, says Doumeizel. He believes seaweed is a good carbon store, and we are working hard at this year’s climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh to get seaweed recognized as a carbon store. Among other things, work is being done to develop an international standard for measuring the carbon sequestration of seaweed. – We need a seaweed revolution, says Doumeizel.
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Seaweed can become the plastic of the future – news – Klima
