Algae-based bioplastics a fast-growing market

When “plastics” and “the sea” are used in the same sentence, it is often to highlight the problem of pollution. In fact, a boat made of plastic bottles – the Plastiki – is currently travelling across the sea to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where plastic waste is alleged to accumulate. But an increasing number of researchers are looking to get plastics from the sea – not by fishing out discarded bottles, but by using marine life forms as a raw material to make polymers.