From Brazil with Love: A Seaside, Seaweed and a Fashtech Innovator

Please give us a brief background on how you started. What was the trigger that led to this award-winning innovation?
Thamires Pontes: I come from a nostalgic and colourful city called João Pessoa, state of Paraíba in the Northeast of Brazil. I have a degree in Fashion Design and a Master's degree in Textiles and Fashion, with 10 years of experience in the textile business. Getting to know about the industry and the stages of fabric production left me frustrated when realising how polluting our industry is; it made no sense to me. In my Master's degree, I started researching new materials, in particular biomaterials; it was then that I discovered the potential of seaweed, both for the ecosystem and as a sustainable solution for various industries. I was fashion and now I'm science.

The H&M Foundation has been prominent in investing in new fashion solutions in recent years. I was following the award from the beginning. I tried other times and last year we were among the 20 finalists, but this year after a lot of work, maturity and resilience, we did it!

In our project we showcased the problem throughout the fashion value chain, from cultivation to the final product and how seaweed can be the solution to shape the future of textiles, with clean cultivation without pesticides or insecticides, purchase of raw materials fairly, and how encouraging the cultivation of algae can be an effective source of income for traditional communities; in addition to being the organisms with the highest growth rate on the planet, they are also capable of absorbing 5 to 20 times more greenhouse gases.

What are the challenges faced this far—be it in terms of product, the research and development and finally the commercial roll out? If not yet rolled out, by when do you hope to do so?
Thamires Pontes: Our initial challenge was to map the seaweed industry in Brazil and around the world, to understand if it is possible to scale up to meet the demands of the textile industry. I like to say that the textile industry is a big chemical industry, so another big challenge was finding the “perfect” formulation with the qualities we need so that our fibres can be a sustainable alternative to replace traditional ones. We are finalising our prototype and everything indicates that in the second half of this year we will test our MVP in the industry on a smaller scale.

Imagine promoting seaweed cultivation as a substitute for cotton, says your website. Can we expect seaweed fields in the future? How viable, feasible would it be?
Thamires Pontes: If we consider that Brazil has almost 10,000km of coastline, we are very privileged to encourage the cultivation of seaweed in our country, as was done with the cultivation of cotton in the 1980s here. Seaweed does not need pesticides or insecticides, it does not need arable land, it is abundant all over the planet and has a high daily growth rate.

With global warming and the reduction of fish for fishing, the activity of cultivating algae can be a real source of income for coastal communities and job creation. Brazil is evolving in terms of regulations and incentives for the blue economy. I see a favourable scenario not only locally but also globally.

Please take us through the process—how seaweed is used, its future applications.
Thamires Pontes: Seaweed has been used in the food industry for many years and has recently been explored in others such as: pharmaceuticals, biomaterials, civil construction, animal feed, beauty, packaging, pigments, design and also textiles. We literally have an ocean of opportunities to apply them. 

At Phycolabs we have two more products on our roadmap, mainly with the concept of no-waste; today our efforts are at PhycoFiber for which we have developed methodologies for the development of the fibre and improving them both for fashion and for technical textiles.

There is a lot of doubt in the industry on how viable these biomaterials are, specially with reference to their sustainability and biodegradability, more so because they undergo several processes. What do you have to say about it?
Thamires Pontes: We live on a planet where the generation of plastic waste has more than doubled in the last two decades and in the last century life has revolved around fossil fuels, in addition to the loss of biodiversity. We need to look for new material systems that are not of petrochemical origin, mainly in our clothes. A new era of materials is biological.

Biomaterials can reduce environmental impacts, in particular GHG emissions, energy and water consumption. However, like all innovation and R&D processes, we need time to adapt to industry parameters and evaluate. It is important to emphasise that each raw material that generates a biomaterial goes through an individual process that may or may not be polluting. 
I believe that the first step has already been taken; we understand that we need to be inspired by the brilliance of nature to develop materials from living and regenerable things.

Which brands are your clients? What is the feedback like? What are the changes that they have demanded since you started?
Thamires Pontes: Big players in the international and Brazilian industry are very eager to test our product and so are we. After our MVP we will have these feedbacks. I can't wait.