These scientists are making foam from algae. And it could be a game changer for a type of pollution that has a much larger footprint than most people realize: flip-flops. They're the world's most popular shoe, and they're piling up on beaches and in the ocean. Most are made from plastic foam, which takes decades or centuries to break down naturally. But these researchers growing green, slimy algae may just change that. But can this new kind of foam really replace regular flip-flops?
Steve Mayfield runs the lab that makes the flip-flops. He's studied algae for 35 years, and he's still excited to talk about it. They are the most efficient photosynthetic organisms on the planet. And they're easy to grow and harvest in man-made ponds, using less land than plants. The process for turning algae into flip-flops is surprisingly simple. The shoe consists of a footed made from flexible foam, an outsole made of a more rigid foam, and a cotton strap. To make the foam pieces, the researchers use an industrial machine to mix together compounds created from algae oil. This is the same machine you'd see if you went into any one of the shoe manufacturers in the world. We want to make sure that the research and the work we do here is relevant to the real world, to the commercial world. The machine pours the mixture into molds.
The team then applies heat, and the foam expands into the shape of a shoe. They wait about 10 minutes for the foam to cure, then peel the pieces out and assemble the finished product. You put the strap through here, and then put the back two parts here, you glue that on, and then this entire thing glues, and that's it. That's all the shoe is. So the manufacturing of these things is also really straightforward. The sandal is 100% biodegradable. It takes three to six months to break down in a compost pile, or if it ends up in the ocean, it would take about a year. That's much faster than the average flip-flop made from plastic. And replacing traditional plastic flip-flops with algae-based ones would also reduce the demand for fossil fuels. Petroleum itself is biodegradable.
They become not biodegradable when they go through a refinery, and then a chemical company converts them to a plastic that is not biodegradable. So all we're doing is instead of digging algae oil out of the ground, we're growing algae oil in ponds. That's why for years, researchers around the world tried to turn algae into a low-cost, low-emission biofuel. And for the last 15 years, private investors and the US government poured billions of dollars into this research. But despite those efforts, no one has yet figured out how to make algae biofuel cheaper than fossil fuels. We're always going to be five years away from making algae biofuels economically liable. Maybe we should tackle one of the other problems that the world has that are a little easier to achieve economically. They shifted their focus to biopolymers, or plastic alternatives made from plants. They sell at a higher price than fuel. No. 1, they're about 10 times more expensive than fuels, so the economics works out better. But No. 2, plastic and ocean plastic pollution is an enormous problem, and we need to address that.
The latest research reveals that plastic pollution is everywhere, even at the lowest depths of the ocean. If current trends continue, the amount of plastic entering the environment annually will nearly triple over the next two decades. The problem becomes apparent in places surrounded by water, like the Aldabra atoll off the east coast of Africa. Last year, researchers collected 25 tons of trash there. They found that nearly a quarter of it was flip-flops. If you actually look in the world at what shoe is worn by the majority of people on the planet, it's actually a sandal or a flip-flop. But getting these more sustainable flip-flops into stores remains a challenge. Mayfield founded a company, Agenesis Materials, to start to figure that out. The best discovery in the world that stays in the lab doesn't really impact the world. What impacts the world is products. Our plan in our startup company was to build a shoe so cool and so sustainable that we forced all of the other companies to pivot and become sustainable-shoe brands. He says they're already working with a major shoe entailer to begin commercial production in Mexico. But the pandemic has caused delays. Production's going there now, but kind of slow. We hope the flip-flops will be available by sometime next summer. And the startup faces another big challenge. It can't actually buy enough algae to support its supply chain. For now, it's making flip-flops primarily from plants, not algae. We get as much as we can from algae, and then we fill in the rest of that using plant oils. Steve believes the supply will catch up over time as more algae farmers enter the market. In the future, you will buy 100% algae-based shoes. But if we don't make our first million shoes, then people won't build the algae ponds so we can make our next hundred million shoes. But others, like researcher John Benemann, point out that algae farming will have to increase dramatically in order to support mass production of items like shoes. You're going to need 100 times more to be able to hold our heads up. For that reason, it could be more practical and profitable to make biodegradable shoes out of widely available crops like soybeans.
The argument that the algae have this particular and specific competitive advantage is one that still needs to be developed. But Steve argues that algae is better because growing it requires less land and water than plants. For now, Agenesis Materials is working with oils from nonedible plants. We choose not to use soybean or canola because those are food oils. So we don't want to compete with food. Ultimately, growing more algae and using it to make stuff is a step in the right direction. I'm not sure to what extent this will actually reduce CO2 emissions, blah, blah, blah, etc. But it's definitely stuff we need. We need to have these kinds of market entries. Perfect is the enemy of good enough, right? Meaning that if you always look for the perfect solution, you'll never do anything, you'll just sit around. In the meantime, Steve says consumers can do more than simply wait for more environmentally friendly options. Too many people sit back and say, "Oh, well, I would love to have biodegradable plastics, but they're not available to me. "Well, they're not available to you because you don't demand companies make those. I would say the last challenge that I want to put out to consumers is don't underestimate your power and demand that the world change.
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