A regenerative solution

Marsh started her career as a packaging and brand designer for a selection of consumer brands and design studios. As the person responsible for sourcing materials, she was frustrated by what she felt were a series of partial fixes. "Thin film plastics were very frustrating, because in most cases you could find a Paper based solution that's FSC certified, or you could find a reusable scenario where it's likely the material would get either reused or successfully recycled. But when it comes to things like snack wrappers, and bags and pouches that are definitely the lightest, most convenient way to package most things, there are not a lot of alternatives," she says.

"That was the focus point from [the] beginning, thinking about food packaging, thinking about your candy bar wrappers, your energy bar wrappers... you're hiking and you're snacking on something, then you have to carry around your trash the whole time, and it feels totally at odds with the environment that you're in. How do you solve the problem of thin film?" she says.

Seeking more than a partial fix, Marsh became "obsessed" with natural polymers and their place within the circular economy. "I just love the idea that we can regenerate nature using those principles, and if you map natural polymers with regeneration, you land at seaweed," Marsh explains. "I also grew up in California, so my childhood was spent in tide pools, and I had family who worked at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I understood ocean ecosystems and how important seaweed is to habitat, to ocean health in general, to carbon sequestration, to coastal communities. It just seemed like this untapped resource at the time."

From idea to reality

Marsh's first foray into developing a seaweed-based film is not as high-tech as you'd expect. "I literally ordered seaweed off the internet, mixed it up in a pot with a few different ingredients, and made some extremely ugly prototypes," she says. "I thought, if I can do this with no skill or expertise in material science whatsoever, certainly a much smarter person can succeed."

The material prototypes, and Sway the brand, were a product of Marsh's master's thesis at design school. She used the time to create a business plan and map out a potential supply chain and, when presenting it to multinational corporations at the Aspen Ideas Festival, it received such an enthusiastic reception there was almost no choice but to go ahead and make Sway a reality.

"My co-founder Matt and I drove from Berkeley down to Peru, visiting seaweed farms throughout Central and South America. We met with other biomaterial innovators, really trying to understand how you build a business around this. Then during the pandemic, we built the foundation of the company and built out a visual identity around how Sway could be positioned as an ingredient brand," says Marsh.

Establishing a more solid brand meant that Sway could apply for the Beyond the Bag challenge, where it was chosen as the winner from a pool of over 450 submissions. The outcome was product testing opportunities with CVS, Target, and Walmart, plus the hiring of their first full time employee, lead materials engineer Matt Catarino. "That enabled us to have a clear thesis around what new materials could be, what it means to design through the lens of regeneration, and then how do you actually scale the thing?" says Marsh.

Living up to expectations

Novel nature-based and nutrient materials have a habit of becoming compromised in commercial applications. Plastic coatings and synthetic additives often rear their ugly head, transforming what was promised to be a plastic-free material into a plastic-based material that cannot compost or biodegrade as originally promised. In order for its packaging to be truly regenerative, Sway had to put in the work to find suitable inputs rather than rushing to market on a compromise, undoubtedly making the development journey tougher.

"We need more truly bio-based colourants and bio-based inks. It's very difficult for us to source materials and has required quite a bit of work from the Sway team to vet and test different colourants and different inks for printing. We need more solutions there," Marsh says. "We were surprised that so many food grade colouring agents are not actually 100% plastic free, but we've found success in pigments that have been extracted from flowers and other plants."

The diligence of Marsh and her team shows in the results of end-of-life testing. Tests conducted with the Compost Manufacturing Alliance showed the material disappears entirely in industrial compost in less than 48 days; testing done as part of the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize showed the material will break down in a simulated whale gut; in-house testing showed it will break down in garden compost "faster than a corncob but slower than a banana peel"; and TUV Austria home and industrial compost ratings are expected soon.

Sway packaging has also been put under scrutiny in soil control labs to ascertain its nutrient value and see whether it gives back to the soil, therefore living up to the brand motto of replenishing the planet from sea to soil. The results so far? Promising, says Marsh.

Going commercial

The shift from developmental product to commercial proposition isn't always easy, but Sway got a boost in the right direction courtesy of the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize. The company was announced as the winner in March 2023, having first applied in October 2021. "It was really rigorous. The parameters for winning that prize were the most robust out of any we've seen. The criteria for winning are: the material's got to scale, it's got to be cost competitive, it needs to perform in a competitive way to plastics, it needs to actually biodegrade, not just in compost but also in marine conditions, and there needs to be positive environmental and social impacts through production," says Marsh.

Sway met all of those criteria with its bolstering of employment opportunities for coastal communities, regenerative supply chain, proven biodegradability, and pathway to scale. As a result, the company won a USD 600,000 prize fund, the opportunity to work with Tom Ford Beauty and Estée Lauder on market readiness and application development, and support in manufacturing expansion.

But Sway isn't hanging around for all of that to come to fruition. On Earth Day 2023 it held a "seaweed celebration" in collaboration with woollen accessories brand Graf Lantz, where it announced the first ever product packaged in Sway's home-compostable seaweed-based polybag. Simultaneously, the brand updated its website to allow for brand inquiries for its first product range—clear, emerald, and sapphire film rolls.  

Swaying the future

With a commercial launch under Sway's belt, Marsh has an eye on the future, aiming to be price competitive by 2027. A second fundraising round is underway, and a new co-located scaling model is being built out this year, which will mean Sway can licence manufacturing in other areas, such as Southeast Asia, where both seaweed and plastic production are abundant. "We love the horizontal scaling model, we love hyperlocalised supply chains, it's beneficial to everyone. It's more cost effective, it's more reliable, everybody wins."

In order to convert future markets and make that horizontal scaling work, Marsh knows she must work with those who are currently embedded within plastic production. "Do we need to turn off the petroleum tap? Do we need to absolutely shift away from plastics? Yes. But to do that we have to embrace nuance and partner with folks in that field. Everybody needs to be participating in the solutions, it's too urgent a problem not to," she says. "Certainly folks are sceptical but the overwhelming majority of plastic manufacturers we meet with know how urgent it is that we switch away from traditional plastic. Overwhelmingly, there's a warm reception from those in the plastic industry to switch over to materials like ours."