The California startup called Sway spent five years developing a resin that’s totally bio-based, home compostable and made mostly from seaweed. Now they’ve got a name for it: Thermoplastic Seaweed resin, or TPSea for short. And Sway has plans with brands to use the product as a replacement for petroleum-based plastic packaging that people toss in the trash.
“We’ve secured partnerships with the plastic industry to produce incrementally larger volumes,” says Julia Marsh, cofounder and CEO. “Sway will hit commercial volumes this year.”
This comes with news of a successful $5 million seed round led by Third Nature Investments, including support from The Helm, Alante Capital, BAM Ventures, Superorganism and others.
The funds will support the scaling of products from Sway, which won first place in the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize in 2023. That came with $600,000 and even more valuable industry relationships.
TPSea debuted in January in Paris at Biofabricate 2024, “the premiere showcase for pioneering biomaterial innovation.” The resin comes in pellet and film form and is designed to mesh seamlessly with traditional plastic manufacturing systems.
“We can sell resin directly to plastic manufacturers to replace all different kinds of plastic,” Marsh says. “We also work with packaging distributors like EcoEnclose to bring products to market. They take rolls of Sway film and transform it into finished products, like bags and windows.”
That means Sway products will be distributed to a network of thousands of brands. Which could have a sizeable impact, since the packaging sector is the largest generator of single-use plastic in the world, accounting for 36% of all plastics produced, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Other startups pushing “seaweed plastic” include second- and third-place winners of the Tom Ford prize, Zerocircle of India and Notpla in London. Those two were among companies who formed a Natural Polymers Group in late 2023 ahead of negotiations on a UN Plastics Treaty.
The list of companies on board with Sway’s TPSea includes those in fashion, food and home goods.
J.Crew is testing TPSea film polybags for items like sweaters and swimwear.
“Projects like this take time, and we’re thrilled to see Sway’s steady progression toward market-scale production that will empower brands like ours to transition into next-generation materials,” Doug Forster, chief sourcing officer at J.Crew, said in a statement.
Burton is testing Sway film in sleeve format, as a potential solution for protecting gear during transit.
“As a purpose-led brand committed to minimizing our impact to the planet, reducing Burton’s reliance on single-use plastic packaging is a top priority—but it has been historically tough to identify an alternative that performs through delivery to end-user, meshes seamlessly with our global supply chain, and is easy to responsibly dispose of,” Packaging Engineer Mitch Rovito added.
Until now, of course.
Marsh adds: “The resin is all made in the United States with traditional plastic manufacturers who have commercial capacity for Sway to scale with.
“Sway sources seaweed from vetted ocean farms and processors in emerging blue economy zones and extracts the natural polymers of seaweed, which mimic the qualities of plastic.”
Marsh says this year has been a difficult one for raising funds. Not to mention that female-founded companies like hers “still receive only 2% of all venture capital investment.”
The seaweed industry, for its part, is anticipated to help most farmers, especially women, according to the World Bank.
That’s in addition to being abundant and fast growing, with the potential to sequester up to 20 times more carbon per acre than trees.
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