Narrator: This is how algae is turned into plastic.
One company bets this green powder can replace
at least some plastic in almost any product
while also cleaning the air and water.
Too much algae can hurt natural ecosystems
and sometimes make toxins that endanger humans and animals.
Can this invention rid the world of harmful algae
and fight greenhouse gases?
We visited two factories
on opposite sides of the globe to find out.
It's a race against time to clean harmful algae
out of waterways before it dies.
It'll sink to the bottom, it'll decompose,
it'll release those nutrients back into the water column,
and then with sunlight and water,
again, you're going to have another bloom.
Narrator: Rotting algae also releases methane,
a greenhouse gas over 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
Ryan Hunt cofounded Bloom in the hope that
monetizing algae will lead to cleaner waterways.
But first, you have to get microscopic algae
out of the water.
Bloom made a machine that can do that on the spot.
Engineering firm AECOM rents the harvester
and has used it to clean up harmful blooms
in New York and Florida.
Bloom buys algae from around the world
and turns it into plastic pellets
at its headquarters in Mississippi.
First, workers run the algae through a grinding machine.
This equipment allows us to mill the algae
into a very fine powder and select the particle size
that we need for our process.
Narrator: Then they blend the powder with plastic.
The machine creates hot strings of the mixture.
A blade cuts the strings into pellets,
and water passes through the system.
Ryan: The pellets are cooled
out of the molten state into a rigid form,
and they're dropped into a Super Sack,
where we can store them
and we can package them for use by our customers.
Narrator: Nearly every plastic product
is made from pellets.
Brands can buy Bloom's algae pellets
to replace traditional ones in their products.
Ryan: We started with making flowerpots.
That's evolved into making sneakers for Adidas
and a whole bunch of other products,
such as sports grips and traction pads.
Narrator: Now, Bloom's pellets are mostly used
in foam for shoes.
Algae can be a good substitute for plastic
because it contains lots of protein.
But algae pellets can't completely replace regular ones,
or the final foam wouldn't be springy enough.
Typically, we'll use anywhere from 10%
to maybe as high as 30% of the algae in the final foam,
just depending on that performance need.
Narrator: One of Bloom's customers
makes its product here, in Dongguan, China.
This factory produces sock liners,
the foam part of a shoe that sits under your foot.
It's made from 15% Bloom pellets
mixed with traditional plastic ones.
Technicians carefully measure out the two types,
and then a machine mixes them together.
After that, it's business as usual
for the foam factory.
Workers knead the pellet mixture
and shape it into sheets.
Then a machine heats the sheets under pressure
until they expand into foam.
Workers trim the foam sheets
and mold them into the finished sock liner.
Bloom shares data on the environmental impact
of the pellets, which brands can use for marketing.
We can calculate the environmental impact
on a gram-per-gram basis.
We can tell you exactly how much water was cleaned
and how much carbon was captured in that shoe.
Narrator: Ryan says each pair of sock liners
kept about 8 grams of carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere
and cleaned about 17 liters of water.
Dr. Scholl's Shoes has made more than 2 million pairs
of sock liners since it started working with Bloom,
which the companies say kept about 17 metric tons
of CO2 from the atmosphere.
That number includes carbon dioxide
removed from the air by algae
and emissions that were prevented
by using algae in place of plastic.
But at the end of the day,
it's still more plastic, right?
Most shoes made with Bloom
are not any more recyclable than regular ones.
We are faced with a difficult challenge
because the footwear materials
typically are made in a way
that is not conducive to directly recycling them
through traditional means.
Narrator: And they're usually not biodegradable.
But when it comes to storing greenhouse gases
inside an object,
not breaking down is the whole point.
If the product degraded, it would release the carbon
back into the atmosphere.
Experts say this type of technology
can help fight climate change.
Right now, we just send CO2
into the trash heap in the sky.
But if you can take any of that CO2,
bind it in a stable form,
use it to make money in a valuable product,
you want to do that.
Narrator: But even if all the world's plastic
contained recycled carbon,
it wouldn't make a dent in emissions.
Right now, we emit 51 billion tons
of carbon dioxide every year.
The worldwide volume of plastic that's made every year
is about 1 billion tons,
so we cannot solve climate on the back of plastic.
It's just too small. Nowhere close.
Narrator: So is it worth it?
That depends what problem you're trying to solve.
Ryan says the main benefit of Bloom's work
is cleaner water.
Algae has become a major issue
thanks mainly to wastewater pollution from farms.
Fertilizers are full of nutrients like nitrogen
and phosphorus, which make algae grow faster.
Runoff creates overgrown algae
that removes oxygen from the water
and blocks light to creatures living below.
This is called a harmful algal bloom.
It can kill fish, whales, and dolphins
and make seafood unsafe to eat.
In some cases, blooms can release toxins and make people sick.
43 states have documented illnesses or death of
humans or animals caused by freshwater blooms,
and satellite images show bloom intensity on the rise
in lakes on four continents since the 1980s.
The algae Bloom sources from waterways
primarily comes from Lake Tai in China.
But no matter how much algae you remove,
blooms will keep happening
if wastewater pollution continues.
The way that we ultimately address
harmful algae blooms in a long-term scenario
is addressing the source of nutrients from the beginning.
Narrator: That means cleaning up wastewater
before it reaches rivers and lakes.
The company can do this by intentionally
growing algae at water-treatment plants
to help remove nutrients that cause blooms.
Our hope is, over time, as the scale increases,
we will be able to intercept more pollution upstream,
which will cause less algae blooms in nature.
Narrator: Bloom gets about half of its algae from lakes
and half from treating wastewater.
But what about the environmental impact
of processing the algae and shipping it
back and forth across the globe?
It does take energy to get the algae
into this usable form.
Narrator: A consulting firm called EarthShift
analyzed Bloom's processes and found that
even after you factor in these costs,
algae pellets are more
sustainable than plastic ones.
We're avoiding the massive amount of emissions
associated with drilling for oil, extracting the oil,
refining it into a specific polymer or a specific chemical.
Narrator: Algae also requires less land, water,
and energy than other bioplastic crops,
like corn and soybeans.
Ultimately, Bloom's long-term mission is to teach people
that harmful algae can be put to good use.
Every city has a wastewater plant.
Every wastewater plant has an algae problem.
But no one's addressing it.
No one's recognizing the value.
If people knew that the green scum
in the back of their pond had value,
you bet people would be harvesting it.