Bottles Packaging Seaweed and Algae

London Marathon Replacing Plastic Bottles with Biodegradable Seaweed Pouches

The organizers behind the London Marathon will use edible, biodegradable seaweed pouches containing water in place of thousands plastic bottles during the race on Sunday in a push toward sustainability.

According to CNN, the Ooho seaweed pouches are created by the startup Skipping Rocks Lab and can cost less money to produce than plastic bottles. But unlike plastic bottles, the pouches, which are created from seaweed extracts, decompose in less than two months.

Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, one of the founders of Ooho, told CNN that the company uses “the building blocks of seaweed” to make the capsules. “We remove all the green stuff and the smelly stuff,” he also said.

The London Marathon will reportedly mark the first time the pouches are distributed at a marathon.

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Hugh Brasher, the event director behind the race on Sunday, told CNN that the race will also be serving energy drinks in compostable cups at several stations along the marathon in a push toward sustainability.

Overall, Brasher said the race is estimated to use 704,000 plastic bottles this year, a steep drop from the 920,000 bottles used in 2018.

“The changes and the trials we’re introducing for this year have the potential to change how mass participation events are delivered in future,” he said.

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This article was published on thehill.com

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