How The Seaweed Company is addressing Sustainable Development Goals
By: The Seaweed Company
Tags: Oceans, Sustainability, Climate Change, Environment, Seaweed

By now you’ve likely seen the phrase, Sustainable Development Goals, or acronym, SDGs, or even the logo thrown around a lot — and rightly so. But what does it mean and why is it important? The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015 by the UN as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. It is divided into 17 areas that span between sustainable development, urbanisation and local governance.

The Seaweed Company is proud that across our operations, we actively contribute to 8 of the 17 SGDs. To read the full breakdown of these SDGs and the exact targets and indicators we contribute to within each SDG, click here.

The SDGs the Seaweed Company is contributing towards:

Image: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

At The Seaweed Company, our focus is not only the end products and their benefits, but the raw materials that go into that product, the sustainability across the whole supply chain and the empowerment and heavy involvement of local coastal communities along the way. This way, we can prioritise these goals through our operations. Let’s take a closer look at how:

At The Seaweed Company, we value the wealth of knowledge coastal communities hold and continuously support the economic growth of their regions. These values align with that of SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth. We have seaweed farm operations in Ireland, Morocco, India and the Netherlands. You can see all our farms here, but for now we’ll focus on our farm in Tuticorin in India. Here, our general manager, Hari, directs seaweed farms spread across the coastline of 200km. Local coastal community members are employed, providing economic prosperity and employment security for them and their families. Hari works on developing relationships with small farmers and shares knowledge to teach best practise. Across our farms, The Seaweed Company implements a Seaweed Valorisation Model for island communities to become more independent and resilient. An article on our operations around the world and coastal communities involved will be dropping shortly, so be sure to follow and subscribe. Click here to view our Employment Impact Metrics posted on our website.

The act and nature of growing the seaweed contributes to SDG 14, Life Below Water. The growth of seaweed helps to regenerate local ocean ecosystems by absorbing carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus. Seaweed requires only sunlight and naturally occurring marine nutrients to grow, meaning no inputs including land, fresh water or fertiliser are needed. While growing, seaweed also forms a habitat for marine life and enriches marine biodiversity. Our farms contribute to and promote sustainable aquaculture practises and help alleviate the stress on ocean ecosystems from other practises, for example commercial fishing.

Alaria seaweed, Ireland. Image: The Seaweed Company

Responsible consumption and production are at the core of The Seaweed Company’s operations, as well as SDG goal 12. We are committed to operating a regenerative, nature positive value chain with a minimal waste footprint. We focus on solving some of the world’s greatest challenges when it comes to managing natural resources. For example, irrigation for agriculture claims almost 70% of all freshwater for human use, making it the biggest user of water worldwide. The use of conventional/synthetic fertilisers degrades our soils and surrounding environment. Our solution to these resource intensive practises is embedded in our TopHealth Product which reduces the need for fresh water and fertiliser use on cropland. Overall, we utilise seaweed, a minimal input biomass, towards producing products and concepts that relieve the pressure off energy and carbon intensive industries.

Due to the aforementioned reasons, this too means The Seaweed Company contributes to SDG 13, Climate Action and SDG 15, Life on Land. Across our various products, we can avoid, reduce and remove GHGs from the atmosphere. E.g., increasing soil carbon holding capacity, improving feed conversion rate and reducing methane from livestock. In our applications, the use of seaweed has a lower footprint in comparison to the material or product it is replacing, therefore avoiding GHG emissions. Our range of TopHealth Plants products (agriculture, trees, horticulture, pastures, soil) provides an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides. Our TopHealth Swine, Dairy and Poultry products support health and wellbeing of farm animals. Our products for agricultural and land activities allows for farmers to contribute towards regenerative and inclusive farming approaches. To learn more about our Blue Farming approach, click here.

The Seaweed Company also has other focus areas which include the medical field, functional food and sustainable materials. All these applications contribute to different SDGs in their own way and contributing to these goals in our supply chain always remains a top priority. The Seaweed Company strives to actively educate and build awareness of the value of seaweed and its enormous potential towards contributing to climate change mitigation. We are proud of our impact and can’t wait to continue sharing our journey with other seaweed enthusiasts.

About The Seaweed Company

The Seaweed Company was founded in 2018 and specializes in the development of high value products for humans, animals, soils, and plants and in the cultivation of traceable seaweed species at commercial scale. The Seaweed Company has its own seaweed production locations in Ireland, Morocco, India and The Netherlands and has developed products that contribute to sustainable agriculture. As well, The Seaweed Company is actively involved with innovative research around applications in the medical field (Alzheimer and diabetes), functional food (alternative proteins), sustainable materials (natural composites) and sustainable seaweed cultivation methodologies. The Seaweed Company has a strong focus on Blue Farming, where we use the blue strength of the sea to support our land. Our TopHealth Plants product is an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides.