These Young Men Have Developed a Seaweed Alternative to Plastic

A new Japanese design company called AMAM has decided to call time on plastic and develop a more environmentally-friendly way to package goods. The three designers: Kosuke Araki, Noriaki Maetani and Akira Muraoka teamed up last year to create Agar Plasticity, the trio's alternative to traditional plastic.

Agar Plasticity is derived from agar, the gelatinous material that can be readily found in red marine algae. “We were attracted to the materiality of agar – the delicacy in its texture and beauty in its appearance – at a local supermarket,” Araki told GOOD magazine in an exlusive interview. “Relatively soon after that, we thought its delicate and light structure would be suitable for cushioning material. Then, we did some experiments and found agar was moldable, so we decided to send our proposal to LDA.”

“LDA” refers to the 2016 Lexus Design Awards, where the young designers have already made it to the competition's top four.

What makes their invention so attractive is that it uses a material widely available. According to Kosuke Araki their main ingredient, agar, has a long history as a food ingredient in Japan.

People melt the agar in hot water and make sweets and desserts with it, and the trio explain that the process of creating packaging from agar is not much different.

“We are currently designing a box-like package,” Araki says. “We are ultimately dreaming of replacing disposable plastic products, such as shopping bags, amenity goods prepared at hotels and so forth, with agar-derived plastic.”

Traditional plastic cannot be recycled over and over again and is known for its inability to fully decompose, having a life cycle of somewhere between 500 and 1,000 years.

When compared to traditional plastic, agar-derived plastic can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. It absorbs and retains water and is not harmful to the environment given its original incarnation as marine material.

“Agar is extracted from two specific kinds of red algae by boiling,” Araki says. “One of them – the one used to produce agar powder – can be aquacultured. The other seemingly cannot. The one that can is actually currently cultured and harvested worldwide in Chile, Egypt, Asia.”

This way, it would be no problem to constantly supply packaging manufacturers with the required ingredients; even if demand quickly rises.

AMAM believes that Agar Plasticity has the power to substitute plastic one day and hopes their idea will catch fire. “We believe in that possibility, but unfortunately that is beyond our ability – (it’s) too technical ... for us to achieve by ourselves. So we hope some researchers become interested in our project and get in touch with us for a possible collaboration.”