“What would you do with your life if money was no object?”. Alan Watts.

By 2050, the global population will exceed 9.6 billion. In the last decades deforestation on behalf of land-based plants such as palm, has been a catastrophe for Nature in Indonesia. Palm Oil is used to produce soaps, food and bioplastics amongst others.

In a world that is waiting for a change, Seaweed might be the ideal raw material for a bioplastic’s revolution, it can also be used for food, cosmetics, fertilizers, fuel, wastewater treatment and is reducing the CO2 emissions. Indonesia is the second world producer of seaweed in the world.

Seaweed aquaculture would protect coastal areas and oceans as they need no fertilizers. The seaweed beds are also reducing the acidification in the water and can absorb 5 times more CO2 than land-based plantations, not to mention the employment that it could be generating for the Indonesian highly growing population. But seaweed farming is yet in its infancy.

Warming waters could lead to decrease the seaweed strength and quality. The lack of technical knowledge on farming activities is resulting in the degradation of the environment habitat or low quality of seaweed harvested prematurely.

And the list doesn’t finish, Seaweed farming land is decreasing due to tourism development. Low prices are forcing farmers and young people to turn their backs on this future, because they’re not offered a fair deal, ending up in poverty.

Seaweed aquaculture has to be managed in a more sustainable way. In Indonesia, this could be the source of employment for the future and the weapon to fight climate change, helping with the acidification problem of the water, co2 emissions and substituting the palm oil-based bioplastics, avoiding deforestation.

Now, the change is waiting to happen

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