Sway

Wait, field trips to the dump weren’t on every school’s curriculum?? 🚛 ☼ Reyanne Mustafa is taking us on one, and we have notes 👀

Quick facts for the class:

📈 US plastic waste per person is up 263% since 1980, from 60 lbs to 218 lbs per person (Beyond Plastics)

🌬️ Landfills are the #3 source of human-related methane in the US — nearly 15% of it in 2022 (U.S. EPA)

♻️ We gotta keep recycling *and* we gotta do more. US plastic recycling rates have never cracked 10%, with flexible film under 2% (Beyond Plastics, The Recycling Partnership)

Now the good news: we can all change course! A few of our favorite tips:

🫧 Refuse & reduce! Use less first, then try sustainable swaps. ☼ Reyanne Mustafa is our go-to low-waste icon, and her page is your cheat sheet.

🌊 Better materials exist! Sway’s seaweed-based materials are one solution in a sea of many. Reuse, refill, and compostables all have a role. The goal is using materials for their highest and best use.

🌞 There’s a role for everyone! Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Climate Action Venn Diagram helps you find your niche in climate solutions. Comment VENN and we’ll send you the link.

What would you add to this list?

Video by ☼ Reyanne Mustafa. Give her a follow for more low-waste tips 🌟
Audio by Nick Wrenn 🌱

Compostable, seaweed-based bags now available through the Sway Store 🌊✨

Limited edition designs, accessible MOQs, big impact. Every purchase helps grow a much bigger market for materials made with regenerative ingredients, like seaweed!

3 prints available:
🐚 Seashells: Along the shoreline, treasures await. Inspired by vintage-illustrated field guides, this seashell bag feels like a treasure in and of itself.
🦦 Kelp Forest: Explore the magic of kelp forests and the creatures who thrive among this bag’s key ingredient.
🌏 Love Your Mother: An ode to this precious Mother Earth we call home.

This launch is open to all – and in particular, it’s perfect for the kelp-obsessed creatives, markets, restaurants, boutiques, and event organizers who have been dreaming of the right opportunity to use seaweed packaging.

Pre-orders for our very first limited batch of designs are open now. Order by Nov 11 for 20% off, just in time for the holidays.

Link in bio / shop.swaythefuture.com 🌞🌈🍃

Compostable handle bags, made with seaweed — now just a click away for anyone to purchase ✨

Perfect for the…
🔮 Next big event
👛 Sustainable boutique
💝 Local gift shop
🧵 Etsy shop owner
🌊 Kelp-obsessed artist
🪩 Brand activation
🎄 Holiday market
🌟 VIP gift bag
🍜 Restaurant pop-up
🎶 Music festival

Pre-orders for our very first limited batch of designs are open now. Order by Nov 11 for 20% off, just in time for the holidays.

Shop at shop.swaythefuture.com (link in bio) 💙

It’s time for a material revolution. Here at Sway, we believe the ocean can be a hero in this future 🌞

We use abundant, fast-growing seaweed as our key ingredient in compostable replacements for the most hard-to-recycle plastics. We’re starting with bags for shipping and shopping.

Sway was born from a lifelong love of the ocean, and a core belief that single-use plastic’s gotta go. We’re a team of material scientists, designers, and sustainability experts — who double as surfers, sailors, hikers, and all-around-nature-lovers — driven to usher in a new age of materials.

Want to dive deeper? Follow along, and visit swaythefuture.com for a peek of what we offer 🌊

This bag is made with the ocean’s most generous resource: seaweed 🌞

It’s time for a material revolution. At Sway, we believe the ocean can be a hero in this future. We use abundant, fast-growing seaweed to create compostable replacements for the most hard-to-recycle plastics. We’re starting with bags for shipping and shopping.

Sway was born from a lifelong love of the ocean, and a core belief that single-use plastic’s gotta go. We’re a team of material scientists, designers, and sustainability experts — who double as surfers, sailors, hikers, and all-around-nature-lovers — driven to usher in a new age of materials.

Want to dive deeper? Follow along, and visit swaythefuture.com for a peek of what we offer 🌊

Every day, you touch hundreds of materials —your clothes, car, groceries, and everything else. Unless you’re making a big effort to avoid it, at least 60% of those materials mostly likely contain plastic.

In her talk, Sway CEO & Co-Founder Julia Marsh shares our vision of a future powered by “generous feedstocks” that work just as well as conventional, polluting plastics, but are circular by design. They come from the Earth, and return to Earth after use.

Sway’s hero ingredient? Seaweed! And there are plenty more products fueled by generous feedstocks, too:

🥜 Nut shells — bioplastics (.materials, )
🍍 Pineapple waste — yarn, textiles, and leathers (.anam, , )
🥥Coconut husks — coolers, leather, pallets (, .eco), pallets, )
☕️ Coffee waste — cups (, )
🍄 Mycelium — ear plugs, packaging, leather (.earth, , , )

Which generous material are you most excited about?

Full talk available to stream on , linked in our bio.

Cannes Lions is known as the Oscars of Advertising — and our Unwrap The Future campaign made the shortlist! This signifies something really big: seaweed-based packaging is a tool to drive pop culture and consumer engagement.

For International Seaweed Day, Lonely Whale and Sway flipped the script on the traditional, waste-heavy “unboxing” experience by instead spotlighting the package itself. We partnered with incredible creators, from celebrities like and , to environmental advocates like and , to build excitement and awareness around materials that replenish the planet.

Even pitched in, offering his YouTube platform to exclusively host free streaming of the documentary ‘Seaweed Stories,’ a vibrant film showcasing extraordinary stories and characters from around the world whose lives revolve around seaweed.

The impact of this campaign generated a tidal wave of attention:
🌊 60M+ organic impressions
🔥 2M+ reactions in under a week
🌟 36k+ views of ‘Seaweed Stories’ via

Thank you to our incredible teams, our partners, and *all* of the visionary creators who helped us bring this activation to the world’s stage 👏

Are you ready for seaweed packaging? Learn more at swaythefuture.com!

.The.Chang 💙

Oh, what a night 🪩🕺

Sway celebrated 5 years of product (!) and our new Emeryville HQ with a party. Thank you to all who joined the evening – it was a true delight to unite with friends old and new, honor the past 5 years, and look forward to what comes next 🎉

The repeated feedback we heard was how awesome the crowd was, and it’s true! Brands, plastic manufacturers, packaging distributors, investors, seaweed lovers, compost and waste experts. Innovation is a journey, and we continue to learn and grow with the guidance of our community.

Shoutout to our magical featured guests:
🎤 Speakers from EcoEnclose, Charter Next Generation, Alante Capital, Lonely Whale, Plastic Pollution Coalition, and Fibershed
🌅 Biobased material mood lighting by Gantri
✨ Clay-to-dust ceramic cups by GaeaStar Corp.
✍️ Reusable, recycled material nametags by Unwaste - Giving Plastics a Second Life
🍄 Mycelium earplugs by GOB
🍎 Fresh juices by Thistle
🌊 Delicious seaweed seasonings by Daybreak Seaweed
💧 Seaweed fiber wellness beverages by OoMee
🌿 Compost magic by compostdepot, Bobby Nicholson, and Cold Creek Compost

And a very special thank you to the talented Michelle K. Min 민경은 for capturing the evening! 📸