Sargassum has big business potential

A key official at a non-profit organisation which develops solutions to the complex challenges facing the ocean says while many consider Sargassum seaweed a “nuisance”, it has economic potential for Barbados and the rest of the region.
Scientific Project Manager at Seafields, Franziska Elmer said on Thursday night that while the seaweed that has inundated the region’s beaches is being used to make items such as soaps, paper plates, shoes and even building blocks for houses, much more can be done with it.
“Unfortunately, most of the sargassum that we collect is put in a landfill to rot away and while we have found many uses for it, it’s still in a starting phase of actually building businesses around those uses. Even though sargassum is still a big nuisance, we can turn it into an opportunity and into a blue economy for the Caribbean,” said Elmer.
She was one of the presenters at a virtual forum hosted by Climate Tracker, entitled Blue Resilience – The Approaches to the Sargassum Crisis in the Caribbean.
She highlighted the work being done in Barbados specifically in its creation of biogas from sargassum and wastewater from the rum industry.
While some people have created compost from the seaweed, Elmer joined with other presenters in cautioning homeowners and farmers not to remove it from the beaches and apply it directly to their gardens. She pointed out that sargassum contains arsenic and studies have yet to determine whether it is organic or inorganic and the levels contained in the seaweed.
Senior Coordination Officer at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Cartagena Convention Secretariat and the Caribbean Environment Programme, Christopher Corbin highlighted that with the sargassum affecting multiple sectors, a multidisciplinary approach was needed to address it.
“For many of us in small islands, sargassum is going to affect us one way or another and, therefore, it is important that we engage in educating the public and in researching the sources, the impact, the potential uses and the concerns of using the sargassum which may have high levels of arsenic,” he said. “The science is going to be important to determine what type of responses we should have.”
(JB)