Not­pla is a nominee

They attract­ed a lot of atten­tion at our FACH­PACK spe­cial exhi­bi­tion Tran­si­tion in Pack­ag­ing at Design. Now, the young com­pa­ny Not­pla has been nom­i­nat­ed for the Earth­shot Prize, the Nobel Prize-like award for the envi­ron­ment head­ed by Prince William.

Not­pla is one of three final­ists in the “Build­ing a Waste-Free World” cat­e­go­ry of the Earth­shot Prize. The winner:in beck­ons 1 mil­lion pounds to expand its own solution.

Not­pla, a nod to “Not Plas­tic,” har­ness­es the pow­er of algae to replace sin­gle-use plas­tic, a major cause of glob­al pol­lu­tion. To do so, Not­pla is devel­op­ing a port­fo­lio of biodegrad­able solu­tions that leave no trace at the end of their life.

The UN Envi­ron­ment Pro­gramme esti­mates that of all the plas­tic waste ever pro­duced, only 9% is recy­cled, 12% is incin­er­at­ed, and the remain­ing 79% ends up in land­fills, dumps or the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. Not­pla is lead­ing the way in reduc­ing society’s reliance on unnec­es­sary sin­gle-use pack­ag­ing by devel­op­ing a port­fo­lio of tru­ly biodegrad­able solu­tions made from algae and plants that leave no trace at the end of their end-of-life cycle. In the fight against cli­mate change, sea­weed could be a sur­pris­ing — but cru­cial — weapon.

Sea­weed is one of the rich­est bio­mass sources on Earth — giant kelp bio­mass grows by 20% per day. Its pro­duc­tion does not com­pete with food crops and does not require fer­til­iz­ers or fresh­wa­ter. Final­ly, kelp grown for its pro­duc­tion sequesters car­bon 20 times faster than trees, com­bat­ing one of the main caus­es of the cli­mate cri­sis. If 9% of the ocean had farms with sea­weed, we could remove all the CO2 we pro­duce (La Rev­o­lu­tion des Algues, Vin­cent Doumeizel).

A core val­ue of Not­pla is “Nature knows best” and pro­vides the blue­print for a healthy and hap­py plan­et. In line with the new EU direc­tive on sin­gle-use plas­tics to ban syn­thet­ic mate­ri­als such as PLA, PHA and oth­er bio­plas­tics, Not­pla mate­ri­als biode­grade in just 4–6 weeks with­out the need for indus­tri­al com­post­ing or spe­cial conditions.

The Earth­shot Prize is a glob­al envi­ron­men­tal award led by Prince William to incen­tivize and help repair our plan­et over the next decade. Two strate­gic imper­a­tives embody this goal: 1. Sup­port envi­ron­men­tal inno­va­tors and scale the impact of their solu­tions. 2. inspire opti­mism and encour­age action through cul­ture-shap­ing storytelling.