Algae is already being used to make clothing, power buildings, suck up highway pollution, and feed farmed animals. Soon you may be hitting the gym with algae-based products too.<\/p>\n
A new business called Bloom Foam plans to use algae to make the ubiquitous flexible foams that are found in yoga mats, sneakers and sandals, luggage, and even bath toys.
\nBloom Holdings is joint venture between Algix, a algae biomass harvesting company based in Mississippi, and Effekt, a product and material design and development firm. Using mobile harvesting machines, Algix collects algae from fish farms, lakes, and wastewater facilities and converts it into a dense slurry that is dried and converted into pellet-shaped polymers. These are further processed into a foam that performs on par with today\u2019s products.<\/p>\n
Algae-based foams can be more sustainable in several ways. Like all plastics, usually these foams are made from petroleum. Bloom\u2019s algae-based product would consist of about 40% algae-derived polymers on average, lowering the carbon footprint. In addition, Bloom harvests algae found in waste streams, helping water authorities deal with increasing algae blooms that usually hurt fish and other wildlife.<\/p>\n
“There’s way more algae than we can shake a stick at,” Rob Falken, managing director of Bloom, told Co.Exist.<\/p>\n
Algae is attractive for bioplastics because of its high growth rate and high protein content. Unlike using algae to make biofuel, it also doesn\u2019t matter what strain or species is used\u2014so algae can be harvested directly from ponds or wastewater facilities where it is a nuisance.<\/p>\n
Another advantage, says Falken, is that algae has anti-microbial properties. Bloom is currently doing third-party testing that will validate these properties, which, if successful, could allow Bloom\u2019s customers to market yoga mats or sneakers made from an “anti-odor” material. Currently, anti-odor products usually contain silver compounds. But while silver is effective at killing germs, it can potentially harm human and environmental health.<\/p>\n
Falken says the company has manufacturing facilities in Mississippi and outside Beijing, China (where there are many aquaculture farms with waste algae), and it is considering facilities in Cambodia as well. He estimates that footwear is the company\u2019s biggest opportunity. Bloom hopes to ramp up production starting next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Algae is already being used to make clothing, power buildings, suck up highway pollution, and feed farmed animals. Soon you may be hitting the gym with algae-based products too. A new business called Bloom Foam plans to use algae to make the ubiquitous flexible foams that are found in yoga mats, sneakers and sandals, luggage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[7190],"supplier":[10821,10613],"class_list":["post-28581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-algae","supplier-bloom-foam","supplier-bloom-holdings-llc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28581"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=28581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}