Clean Ocean Win

The Planet is heating up fast, rivers and bays are each day more polluted, inequality is raising while biodiversity is disappearing and ecosystem services are collapsing!

That's why we need to re-design our business models focusing on regenerative systems, so we are offering a blue economy solution with a climate venture model:

Seaweed farms to regenerate degraded estuaries and applied biotechnology to transform these cultivated algae into sustainable products such as bioplastics and biofertilizer! All of this employing poor communities and investing on science at the same time!
By investing in research and innovation we might be able to replicate this model to every polluted coast in the world, growing different and unprecedented types of seaweed and also processing them into new alternative products!

Growing cities without proper sanitation infrastructure, industry waste and garbage management among with pollution from modern agribusiness are damaging important water bodies and their surroundings.

Worldwide, there are several heavily polluted bays, lagoons and other kinds of estuaries compromising societies, economies and the environment by  causing eutrophication, biodiversity losses, emitting greenhouse gases, spreading diseases, impairing scientific studies, reducing well being, leisure, sports and tourism, depreciating houses, business and cultures such as artisanal fishing.
Furthermore, business as usual seems addicted to fossil based products such as plastics and fertilizers, which are very toxic and usually ends up on those water bodies that finally goes to the Ocean.

The most benefited people from our solution are the ones that lives on the surroundings of each estuaries impacted by our work, but indirectly is does benefit the whole population of the city and also it's tourists.
Our solution needs two main types of workers, technical workers that use boats to farm and harvest the seaweeds, and scientists and specialists that process the seaweed biomass in the biorefinery.

So our goal is to offer professional training capacity and jobs for the young people from the closer economic vulnerable communities, and attract senior and young scientists from the main universities around to operate the biorefinery, sales and the R&D.

Last but not least, this initiative helps to mitigate the climate crisis so it can benefit the whole global society and the future generations.

Seaweed farms needs sea water, sun light, carbon and nutrients to grow, in this process the algae releases oxygen to the water. So if you farm seaweed on a heavily polluted bay, for instance, you help to clean its water, because the organic pollution is actually made by the nutrients consumed by the algae, as well as its carbon concentration. The eutrophication process ("dead zones") lowers the waters oxygen levels that the cultivated algae helps to regulates during its growth. Furthermore, the farms itself creates good new habitat for marine life such as turtles, porpoises and shrimps, for example.

And, by producing bio-fertilizer and bio-plastics from the seaweed biomass we are able to produce goods that compete with traditional fossil based fertilizer and plastics.

In short, we use natures photosynthesis biotechnology to tackle polluted waters and global warming, generating jobs and investing on science and innovation to produce sustainable alternative goods that benefits poor people, the environment and also the climate.

Both seaweed farms and biorefineries are existing technologies, but most of seaweed farms are located at coastal and ocean regions with clean water while our proposal is to operate at polluted estuaries precisely because these farms have the potential to help regenerate these ecosystems.

Algae have been used in the industry for quite some time and mainly for applications in cosmetics, food and fertilizers, recently started also the development of bioplastics made of algae, but it is still necessary to deepen the research in this area.

Another innovation approach is that we want to offer resilient blue jobs and training for the young and poor, because, not coincidentally, most of the populations around these degraded estuaries are composed of communities characterized by social and economic vulnerability.

There are three main core technologies:

1. Seaweed farming. Its not a new technology but the kind of region that we propose to operate is unprecedented.

2. Social technology. Meaning that it represents a transformational methodology developed and applied in the interaction with the low-income population and appropriated by it.

3. Applied research and development biotechnology. Meaning the role of the biorefinery transforming the raw algae into products such as bioplastics, for instance.

Seaweed farms have already proven environmental positive impacts, and its considered a great tool to combat dead zones, capture carbon and protect biodiversity.

Social technologies also have a great track record of empowering low income communities, giving good opportunities for young people with low access to education and without good prospects for their respective futures of life.

By uniting those two solutions with one organization we might be creating a local development hub, capable of being replicated in places with similar characteristics.

This project is still at its early stage of development, we are currently looking for funding seed capital to start our proposed operations, so by now we are still not serving our target population.

Our goal is that, with the first investment, in one year we might be serving 40 young people from poor communities.

In five years our goal is to impact at least 500 people.

Our solution is characterized by the "win-win" impact, both in social and environmental & climatic. As we are based in Rio de Janeiro, we have a great social inequality, besides three large bays (and innumerable lagoons) each with a different level of pollution. Therefore, we believe that by starting our work in the largest and most polluted bay, Guanabara Bay, given our potential for positive impact, we also have the potential to return huge media visibility, and this may allow us to replicate our model, not only to the bays and lagoons of Rio de Janeiro, but to any polluted estuary in the world. That's our goal.

The main barrier is financial because we are currently living political and economic crises in our three spheres of government (Federal, State and Municipal), in addition we have high interest rates, which reduces the inclination of private investors in new business.

By applying at challenges like this one and also looking for international networking so we can fund raise the initial capital for this social and environmental venture.
By the time we raise the money for our initial budget we can start to operate the ocean farms and employ our target population.

Besides me, I have a chemical engineer partner with phd in polymers.

We started to develop this project last year and meet once a week to work on this project.

I studied economics at the college and have good experience as business consultant, specialized on sustainability management, strategic planning and business modelling. My biggest project was a full length environmental documentary called 'Urban Bay', released at the first UN Ocean Conference, NYC 2017, and and awarded prizes at several international environmental film festivals.

Joao Arthur Batalha, my partner is a chemical engineer with a phd in polymers and post doctorate on a related issue. Meaning he knows how to transform the seaweed biomass into bioplastics.

So far we have been able to involve research professors, course coordinators of three major reference universities here in Rio, in the fields of chemistry, oceanography and biology. They offered technical support and use of the infrastructure of their laboratories for our project.

We also have good relationship with the UNDP Brazil, because they supported the documentary that I did produce.

Our main value proposition are: formation of a local development hub; regeneration of the environmental quality of estuaries; negative carbon footprint; production of high added value products, such as bioplastics and biofertilizer.

Our key customers are the agribusiness (for the biofertilizer) and packaging industry (for the bioplastics). Our key beneficiaries are jobless young population from low income communities.

We are looking for grants and/or angel investors, specially from abroad, to fund raise our seed capital and start our operations.

After that, we believe that just by selling products we might have enough revenue to reinvest and scale the operations.

In short, with Solve we can have great visibility and part of the initial capital for the operations. Visibility such that it help attract interested investors, potential partners and collaborators.

Green Wave;

Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation;

Aqua-Spark;

Ocean X;

Ocean Foundation; 

Oceanic Preservation Society;

Conservation X Labs;

Bellora (Ocean Forest);

and also big companies of the algae sector such as:

Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Cyanotech Corp, DDW Inc., DIC Corporation,
Dongtai City Spirulina Bio-Engineering Co., Ltd., Fuqing King Dnarmsa
Spirulina Co., Ltd., GNC Holdings, Inc. etc.

We would like to utilize the prize to develop at least a minimum viable product of our proposal so we can prove to ourselves and the world that our business model addresses both the concepts of circular economy and blue economy.

We believe that by doing this and proving our concept we can really advance our solution.