Saint Mary’s University students transforming seaweed into compostable plastic

Saint Mary’s University students transform seaweed into compostable bioplastic that could be used to make grocery bags.

A recent engineering graduate from Saint Mary’s University is working to eliminate the use of single-use plastic.

“Last year, working on a research project, I wanted to change something from an idea into a reality and then from there we found ‘Alaagi’ where we are creating bioplastic using seaweed,” says Sheheryar Khan, CEO and founder of the group.

Khan says Alaagi means change in Greek and that’s exactly the message they want to convey. Their goal is to transform seaweed into a compostable type of plastic.

“Seaweed grows everywhere in the oceans and is a material that is free and governments pay us to use it, or to extract it and we can use that to make our plastics,” says Khan.

Khan says they are ensuring the seaweed is harvested in a sustainable way. When the collected seaweed samples are cut halfway so the ecosystem is not disrupted.

The team is currently able to make soft and flexible films, and eventually they plan to create hard and rigid plastics that are all compostable.

“We are testing for stuff like durability, barrier properties and then we would apply for certifications such as compostability and food safety and hoping to have that in before the end of the year,” says Khan.

Bioplastic bags are the first product they are creating and those will be ready to hit the market in the next few months. But their end goal is to break into the food packaging industry.

“We are targeting the food packaging industry to remove plastics that are used in the single-use plastics industry, such as wrapping sandwiches, wrapping seafood and meat,” says Khan.

Khan says none of this would be possible without the university providing the space and the professors, as well as the Enactus team and co-op students.

“When it’s in the beaker, it’s all liquid and the second you put it in the trays it gels and you can peel it and you can come back like 10 seconds later and it’s an actual film, which is super cool,” says student Brianne Lawton. “At the start I was just scanning through research articles, and doing all the starter stuff you have to do. But now going back and looking at my organization and all my notes versus my notes now, it’s a crazy difference. Now I can identify all the important information that is going to be useful whereas before I was like, well, this could be helpful.”

“We are part of the Hult competition, we are the top 22 teams in the world out of 15,000 that participated and we are going to London, U.K., with my teammates Vaishali and Tyler for $1 million in September,” says Khan.

Khan’s two teammates, Vaishali Sachdeva and Tyler MacLean, helped him and Alaagi compete against 56 international teams. Now it’s on to stage four of the Hult Prize competition: the Global Accelerator.

Khan says a victory would bring them even closer to their goal of removing plastics

“That one million would go towards creating more of these plastics and we would love to have our own facility to create these samples and supply the companies that we are in talks with and it would really mean a lot in terms of bringing people that have expertise in this field,” says Khan.

The team just won the national Enactus competition and are heading to Thailand for their world cup this fall.

“A chance to have an impact on the lives of the people after us, the next generation and to help make science better and more innovative,” says Lawton.

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page