Regenerating the Future Today with Julia Marsh, Sway

Welcome to Planet & Purpose , a bi-weekly LinkedIn Newsletter featuring professional insights and personal experiences from ocean and climate ecopreneurs, VCs, advocates, and beyond.

If you’re new to my page and this newsletter, welcome! I’m Daniela V. Fernandez , Founder & CEO of Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA).

Today, I’m joined by Julia Marsh , Co-Founder & CEO of plastic innovation startup and SOA Ecopreneur Network member Sway . As we wrap up Plastic Free July , we discuss her founder's origin story on how she went from a purveyor of plastic packaging to one of the leading solutionists solving our global plastic crisis.??

Her mission is essential as we know science projects that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050 without systemic, rapid change.

Sway is building a movement behind their regenerative solution leveraging social media for community building, and collaborating with classic brands to drive awareness and adoption at scale.

Dive in below and as always, stay tuned for upcoming editions!

Daniela (DVF): Welcome to Planet & Purpose , Julia! I’m excited to spotlight your startup Sway and how you’re using seaweed to solve the world’s packaging crisis during Plastic Free July!

Julia (JM): Thank you so much, Daniela. It’s amazing how much the public mobilizes around this annual movement (over 100 million participants across 190 countries) to adopt alternatives to plastic and make individual changes for our planet. I’m happy to share my career background, what I’ve learned as a founder, and more about Sway.?

DVF: Let’s dive in! Please share more about your early career as a designer and how you became aware of the plastic problem.

JM: Before Sway, I was a designer building brand and packaging systems. Often, I was responsible for bringing plastic into the picture.

In a sea of plastic alternatives, I found very few that were truly “better” across critical criteria. Each one made some sort of compromise across feedstock sustainability, decomposition rate, performance, or affordability. And many bioplastics came with their own, unique consequences .?

In pursuit of solutions, I became obsessed with the third principle of the circular economy . This asks that we regenerate nature, and in this case, identify plastic replacements that can replenish life rather than harm it.

DVF: I love that you thought critically about solutions out there, sniffed out the greenwashing, and decided to come up with something better. Please say more about what came next.

JM: ?Despite my non-engineering background, it was clear to me that nature provides abundant solutions that embody the principles of regeneration. Mycelium, coconut husks, grasses, microalgae, agricultural waste, seaweed… All these renewable resources are relatively untapped and can drive innovation while giving back to ecosystems as they grow.?

Seaweed is what really caught my attention, though.

It is rich in natural polymers, which makes it an ideal feedstock to replace plastics. Seaweed meets all of the criteria for success—it grows incredibly quickly, has few carbon-intensive inputs, requires no fresh water or pesticides to grow, and is available on coastlines worldwide.

DVF: That resonates with me so much. I remember seeing seaweed all the time when I was a kid on the beaches in Ecuador. So what did you do with this realization?

JM: As the vision for Sway began to crystalize, my Co-Founder Matthew Mayes and I visited seaweed farms along the pan-American highway from California to Peru, meeting with scientists and seaweed cultivators.?

These visits proved our hypothesis that seaweed is the most promising source to support a material revolution—and that’s why we started Sway.

DVF: What brands have already stepped up to lead the regenerative packaging charge?

JM: We just launched a new partnership with World Surf Champion John John Florence and his surf brand Florence to package a limited edition boardshort—one John John will be rocking this summer during the 2024 Summer Olympics.?

We’re thrilled to share that the boardshorts sold out within 24 hours of going live and gathered thousands of likes and comments across social. The coverage in world-renowned Surfer Magazine was the icing on the cake of this dream collaboration!?

The collaboration was sparked after John John served as a judge in the TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Prize where we won first place.

DVF: Speaking of, I know you just wrapped the accelerator that spun off from the TOM FORD competition. Any exciting takeaways, pilots, or impact stats to share after completing it?

JM: We’re proud of our Sway x Le Club packaging collaboration , helping this swimwear brand become the first in the industry to adopt seaweed packaging.??

We recently hosted together an exciting, in-person activation with Le Club to connect the dots between personal and planetary wellness. Our sold-out Care for the Planet, Care for Your Self event united 400+ Miami residents for yoga, impact presentations, and a beach cleanup where we collected 416 pounds of trash. It was incredible witnessing the community show up in force!

We are also now testing a product with Burton Snowboards , prototyping a protective snowboard wrap that could replace the existing problematic films currently used industry-wide. We were thrilled to debut this prototype at World Oceans Week this year in New York with Burton and Lonely Whale !

DVF: It’s amazing how you’ve built this engaged community in a matter of years. From what I can see, your team strikes a chord with Gen Z and Millennials with your clever mix of trend-jacking and informative content . Any advice you can distill for founders looking to do the same?

JM: Building an engaged digital community is a joy and a necessary pursuit. Sway is bringing completely new materials to the world. Our global audience across social media helps us scale by championing these alternative materials. They’re posting us, raising awareness of the benefits of seaweed, and enlisting their favorite brands to swap for circular packaging!

It may surprise you and Planet & Purpose readers that our growth has been entirely organic and executed by a two-person team: myself and Sway Communications Lead Alyssa Pace . We are a living, breathing case study proving that successful marketing doesn’t have to require a huge budget or team.

Three fundamentals that are critical for Sway and could help out fellow ocean tech founders include:

1. Painting an irresistible picture of the future your solution enables: Sway’s platforms, aesthetic, and branding are thriving, colorful, joyful, friendly, and community-oriented. Founders and marketers: What does the future look like through your lens? How can you reflect that in your brand’s distinguishable color palette, tone of voice, imagery, and taglines?

2. Making your movement accessible + inclusive. As our team likes to say, “You shouldn’t need a material science degree to understand why seaweed packaging is cool!”

Founders: Ask your team to pitch that deck to their kid niece, parents, or grandparents! Get real feedback from real people who don’t know the scientific terms or jargon. Include everybody.

3. Building your community from every angle. From Day 1, Sway has designed our business, products, and audiences with the support of our amazing allies—advisors, investors, coalitions, NGOs (like @Sustainable Ocean Alliance!), academic research institutions, peers, and event leaders.?

Founders: Invest in relationships and celebrate cross-sector solutionists; they will take you far!

DVF: And from the outside looking in, it appears you take building community from every angle to heart! You’ve also bridged generational divides, reaching Gen Alpha via Scholastic and Gen X and Baby Boomers via traditional media like Forbes & Fast Company . Is that intentional?

JM: Sway’s vision is to contribute new materials to the circular economy and to help facilitate mass adoption of circularity. One way we do that is by advocating for easy access to compost infrastructure, to divert organic waste away from landfills and back into natural systems.?

We envision a future where everyday materials feed into cycles of biological circularity—a system nature invented eons ago!

DVF: Speaking of, why the parallel path of both regeneration now and a regenerative future?

JM: Our materials already embody regenerative principles right now.

By designing and scaling next-generation materials made from seaweed, we have the opportunity to evolve entire supply chains toward a reimagined future with our actions today.

In a regenerative future, ‘plastic’ has the power to replenish the planet, rather than pollute communities and the environment. We’ve collectively driven down demand for harmful petrochemicals and actively healed natural systems—from sea to soil. That’s a future to strive for!

DVF: For over a decade, the global Plastic Free July movement has worked towards this reimagined future by raising awareness of how people can be part of the plastic solution.?

To do that, they need industry decision-makers to offer consumers better options. What do you feel is motivating the adoption of redesigned, circular solutions in fashion particularly?

JM: With recent scientific reporting on plastic infiltrating the air we breathe, the water we drink, and our bodies, plastic’s saturation in our society is impossible to ignore. As a result, consumer and regulatory pressures are driving brands to make urgent sustainability commitments.

Yet greenwashing is rampant and common bioplastics on the market often have major shortcomings. Brands that genuinely want to do better by our planet and people are realizing that they must go beyond sustainability and towards reimagined, regenerative, circular solutions.

DVF: Final question. For brands that want to do better, please explain all the ways seaweed is the perfect regenerative and circular solution.

JM: Responsible seaweed farming generates so many incredible benefits, going above and beyond the current offering of bioplastics on the market.?

It purifies water, boosts biodiversity, sequesters carbon, and secures climate-resilient jobs in coastal communities, all without the need for freshwater, pesticides, or fertilizers.

DVF: I am and have long been convinced of the magic of seaweed. After this edition, I imagine Planet & Purpose readers of all ages are too!

JM: Thank you, Daniela—for believing in Sway, for SOA’s support, and for introducing us to your audience. We invite everyone to join our movement and follow along at @swaythefuture !

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