Julia Marsh
CEO and Co-Founder, Sway
Imagine a world where new replacements for plastic—inspired by nature, and designed to regenerate—are more than just materials. Their sourcing stories and end-of-life enable a healthier planet. They enable true biological circularity, the way nature intended.
Welcome to the world of biomaterials: technologies that offer a shift away from petroleum by leveraging renewable sources that can be grown again and again. Corn, potato, sugarcane, and wood-based plastic alternatives are already commercially available and widely adopted. Excitingly, there’s also a new wave of “next-generation” materials made with feedstocks that are not just renewable, but regenerative. Mycelium, coconut shells, coffee grounds, pea protein, wetland grasses, and countless other renewable resources are now being leveraged into new innovations while offering ecosystem benefits throughout the value chain.
Seaweed may be the most generous resource on Earth. That’s why at Sway, the material innovation company I co-founded, we’ve centered seaweed as the hero ingredient in a new type of truly circular packaging.
Prior to Sway, I worked as a designer building brand and packaging systems. I loved my career, but didn’t love that I was often the person responsible for bringing plastic into the picture. In fact, too often, I found myself designing beautiful trash. I learned that 80 percent of environmental waste is determined at the design stage, and became obsessed with the idea that designers could be the key to evolving society away from plastic.
While completing my MFA in Design at the School of Visual Arts in New York, I began practicing principles from the Circular Economy framework. Our planet’s primary product economies are linear: we extract materials, transform them into usable items, and eventually dispose of them. In a Circular Economy, “waste” doesn’t exist. Rather, resources are reconfigured such that new value is found.
The three pillars of a circular economy, as defined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, are:
- Eliminate waste and pollution
- Keep materials in use (at their highest value)
- Regenerate nature
Despite my non-technical background, this design-centered framework inspired me to create solutions of my own through my thesis work. As a packaging designer, I saw ample examples of the first two pillars being utilized through package-free and reusable solutions. The third pillar, centered around regenerating nature, felt relatively unexplored. Through my research of “regenerative” feedstocks, I quickly found that seaweed had the most potential to fuel a new wave of circular materials.
I have a personal relationship with seaweed. Growing up beside the ocean, I spent countless hours in tidepools and at the giant kelp exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I’ve always been enraptured by the diversity and beauty of underwater gardens and forests. As an adult, I learned seaweed is also rich in natural polymers—the molecular building blocks that could feasibly be transformed into plastic-like materials.
As my research progressed, I learned seaweed is almost a zero-input crop and can be farmed incredibly efficiently.
Seaweed grows 20 to 30 times faster than corn or sugarcane, seaweed doesn’t require fresh water or pesticides, and it is available on nearly every coastline in the world. It also contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the three key nutrients plants need to grow."
Julia Marsh
CEO and Co-Founder, Sway
Theoretically, a seaweed-based plastic replacement that decomposes into healthy soil after use would embody every pillar of the circular economy.
As the vision for Sway began to crystalize, my co-founder Matt Mayes and I visited seaweed farms and met with scientists—even driving the pan-American highway from Berkeley to Peru meeting with seaweed cultivators! We found that seaweed farms naturally support improved water chemistry, biodiversity, and coastal communities. New science even suggests seaweed can store carbon. When the pandemic halted our travels and sent us back to California, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work turning Sway into the company we know today.
Sway has gained incredible momentum over the past few years. We’ve launched three patented technologies, built a 6-figure digital community championing our solutions, won multiple global prizes for our work, raised over 8 million dollars, and attracted a robust customer pipeline. Our compostable seaweed packaging is being adopted by fashion and outdoor brands like prAna, Faherty, and Florence, and is positioned for rapid market growth over the next few years thanks to packaging distribution partners like EcoEnclose.
Our product portfolio is made possible through TPSea™, a certified 100 percent biobased resin designed to integrate seamlessly with traditional plastic infrastructure, enabling legacy plastic manufacturers to produce our materials at scale with ease.
While the plastic problem is huge, so are the opportunities. Seaweed is just one avenue towards a healthier planet. Consider this your official invitation to step into the circular economy future.
To students: Circular innovation demands diverse skills – accountants, designers, storytellers, statisticians, project managers, community builders, and beyond all play a critical role in enabling circular products to succeed and thrive.
To business leaders: Sway products exist because brands and manufacturers were willing to invest time and energy into piloting our earliest-stage materials. We encourage every brand to budget innovation into their business plans.
To policy experts: Expanded plastic reduction, extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation, bioinnovation funding, regenerative farming, and composting infrastructure will play a critical role in scaling circular materials.
Consider the materials you interact with on a daily basis. What are they made from, what resources did they take to create, who made them, and how did they get to you? Have these conversations with colleagues, friends, and family. And if you know a brand that’s interested in truly better packaging—point them to Sway!
Together, we can create a biologically circular future – one that replenishes the planet, from sea to soil.
About Julia Marsh
Julia Marsh is the CEO and co-founder of Sway, a material innovation startup scaling seaweed-based, home-compostable packaging. Julia spent over a decade designing brand and packaging systems for consumer goods companies, technology startups, and design studios around the world. Her work is driven by a deep passion for regenerative design and biological circularity. Sway's patented products match the vital performance attributes of conventional plastics and are designed to plug into existing infrastructure, enabling scale and massive impact. Unlike plastic, however, their materials are made from an abundant, regenerative resource and decompose into healthy soil after use.
In 2024, Sway was named a Fast Company World Changing Idea. 2023, Sway won first place in the TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Prize. In 2021, Sway also won the Beyond the Bag Challenge sponsored by Closed Loop Partners and a consortium of major retailers. Sway’s solutions have garnered recognition from Vogue, Forbes, Business Insider, and Fast Company. Sway is headquartered in the California Bay Area. Learn more at swaythefuture.com.