ULUU raises $8 million to combat plastic with seaweed and saltwater brewing
Perth biotech startup, ULUU, has secured $8 million in funding for its seaweed alternative to plastics. And it’s using brewing techniques to do it.
Perth biotech startup, ULUU, has secured $8 million in funding for its seaweed alternative to plastics.
The round was led by the CSIRO’s Main Sequence and joined by Albert Impact Ventures, Mistletoe and Possible Ventures. It also has celebrity backing from Karlie Kloss and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker.
The funding will be used to scale the business and push towards more traditional plastic replacements.
ULUU uses brewing techniques and seaweed to fight for our future
ULUU, which was named for the ideas of nature it evokes, aims to fight plastic pollution at scale with its compostable, biodegradable polymer, called polhydroxyalkanoates.
Seaweed is at the heart of the operation, with the company utilising a fermenting process similar to beer brewing with seaweed sugars, seawater and saltwater microbes.
“We actually hire quite a few people from the winery and the beer industry,” ULUU co-founder and ocean scientist, Dr Julia Reisser, said on a call with SmartCompany.
“What we’re doing is more scalable so lots of our engineers come from this background because it’s very similar.”
Seaweed is almost a perfect solution for fighting not only plastic but carbon pollution. It grows much faster than trees and removes carbon from the water.
It firstly does this thanks to ocean currents. Dr Reisser says that 30% of seaweed matter sinks into the deep sea, which then has sediment settle on top of it. This permanently removes the carbon from the ocean.
The magic of seaweed
As for the remaining seaweed, ULUU is working on that.
“We really believe in replacing fossil fuels, which are currently used to make plastic and have a massive carbon footprint,” Dr Reisser said.
“We use this new material made of seaweed, which is fantastic at removing carbon from the environment.
“What it allows us to do is turn a material that’s creating bad things in the world into something that’s actually good. So we can lock the carbon that the seaweed removed into everyday objects.
This process also helps remove nitrogen from the ocean, which is largely there thanks to our poo and fertiliser.
“By farming marine plants we can suck up the pollution and it really helps to create a better ocean,” Dr Reisser said.
Seaweed also doesn’t require the same land mass or resources as other crop-based plastic alternatives might. It’s already growing in our oceans and only requires sunlight and seawater to grow. In this way, it’s also better equipped for ethical and sustainable farming.
“You pick half of it and you leave the rest in the water, so you don’t kill the seaweed. You take the tips and then it grows back,” Dr Reisser explained.
“It’s what’s called vegetative growth and it’s quite a nice marine, nice crop when it comes to creating a more sustainable future.
“Let’s say we were going to replace the 400 million tons of plastic that we produce every year out of corn or sugarcane, that would bring different externalities like deforestation or competition with food prices.”
Reisser says that seaweed gives the world an opportunity to replace fossil fuels with a more sustainable crop.
ULUU’s success metrics aren’t just profit, but being carbon negative
Dr Reisser told SmartCompany that it’s involved with impact investors. So while it does report to the board and shareholders, it’s not just about profit, but impact.
Two of ULUU’s key metrics are replacing tonnes of plastic with ULUU, as well as being carbon negative.
According to Reisser, every kilo of carbon-negative material it produces offsets 5kg of C02.
The empowerment of women is also important to the company, and Dr Reisser says that one of the great things about what it’s doing is the creation of jobs.
ULUU largely works with seaweed farmers in Indonesia, 65% of which are women.
“In these coastal communities you have the husband who is a fisherman and then the wives are seaweed arming to complement the revenue in the family.”
Dr Reisser hopes that as the business scales, more men will begin seaweed farming and that overfishing our oceans will be tackled as well.
