On today’s episode, I sit down with Julia Marsh, co-founder and CEO of Sway, a materials company using seaweed to build compostable replacements for plastic packaging.

In this conversation, we talk about why flexible plastic is such a difficult category to replace, how Julia went from a background in packaging design to building a company around seaweed as a feedstock, and what it actually takes to turn a raw natural material into something that can run on traditional plastic manufacturing equipment.

We also get into sourcing seaweed globally, the challenge of working within legacy industrial systems without compromising the long-term mission, why existing infrastructure was such a critical part of the strategy, and what demand looks like from brands trying to move away from conventional plastic without sacrificing performance.

I learned so much during my conversation with Julia, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.