This week we’re going to address the planet’s plastic problem. These petroleum-based materials only became mass produced after WW2 but as we heard from our very first guest Bill Curtsinger, as early as the 60s micro-plastics were already being identified as a concern in the remote waters of Antartica.

It was about that time that the 1967 movie, The Graduate came out in which a well-meaning Mr. McGuire famously offers career advice to the young, floundering Ben Braddock. “The future is in plastics,” he says. He was not wrong; the 70s and 80s brought a massive and unrelenting surge of consumer and convenience driven plastics that has only continued to grow. And today here we are with massive swaths of plastic waste forming veritable islands in the Pacific ocean.

And while recycling may make us feel better, only 5% to 6% of U.S. plastics are being recycled. According to a recent Greenpeace report, recycling is not economical, it has environmental and health implications, and most plastics are just fundamentally not recyclable.

Our guest today, Thibaut Monfort-Micheo, hopes to help solve this problem. He is co-founder of FlexSea, a UK-based company aiming to use use sustainable seaweed to make alternative bio-based and biodegradable plastics.

Thibaut Monfort-Micheo
FlexSea

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