When Jessica Zinga thought about how best to reduce the plastic pollution at her local beach, she turned to the biggest culprit - fish and chip packaging. Realising she could never stop people from enjoying a battered sav on the sand, Zinga did the next best thing - she made the packaging itself completely biodegradable, by making it out of seaweed.
Zinga, a student at the University of New South Wales’s Art and Design school, has made fish and chip packaging made from 100 per cent seaweed. This means that the packaging can be left to degrade naturally, unlike plastic or styrofoam containers.
“I used seaweed because it’s renewable. It doesn’t use fresh water for irrigation, pesticides or even take up valuable farmland to grow,” Zinga tells SBS. These self-sustaining properties made seaweed the obvious - and cheeky - choice to replace plastic, cardboard and styrofoam for fish and chip packaging. “It’s difficult to avoid the constant waste produced from packaged goods,” says Zinga, “so it’s time for designers to reevaluate the materials they are using.”
The seaweed is heat-pressed into thin sheets, then moulded into forms. Source: Jessica Zinga
The packaging can be left to degrade naturally, unlike plastic or styrofoam containers.
The packaging itself is made of a type of seaweed known as Ulva dishchshjs, which is harvested from rock shelfs.
After sand and other impurities are washed out of the seaweed, it is heat-pressed into a thin sheet, which can be moulded into different forms and left to dry. After being used, the packaging can be returned to the ocean or composted in the garden.
The seaweed packaging is harvested from rock shelfs. Source: Jessica Zinga
Zinga hopes that businesses will begin to introduce her packaging, though she has not initiated this yet. “I can envision packaging for many other forms of takeaway food, permitting that there is sufficient supplies of the seaweed to do so,” she says, noting that while seaweed is an incredible sustainable resource, there is always the potential to exploit natural seabeds when the seaweed is being used for commercial purposes. “Strategic regulations surrounding the management and cultivation of this resource is vital.”
And while the packaging is made from seaweed and is, therefore, edible, Zinga advises against it - for the time being, anyway. “I did think about making packaging that could be eaten, rather than thrown away,” she muses. “But then, the packaging is there to protect the food inside. If the packaging can also be consumed, well… what protects the packaging from contamination?” It’s certainly food for thought.
Jessica Zinga’s Sea Harvest project will be shown as part of the Australian Design Centre’s exhibit, Designing Bright Futures, until January 31 2018. You can find more information .
