Caribbean Beaches Are Being Buried In Seaweed. A Startup Wants To Turn The Mess Into Money.

Millions of tons of seaweed have been spreading across the Caribbean over the past years, washing onto beaches, disrupting tourism and leaving coastal communities with an expensive cleanup problem. A Mexican startup thinks the unwanted algae could be worth something.

Bioplaster Research is turning sargassum, the brown seaweed that regularly piles up along Caribbean coastlines, into biodegradable packaging. Its products include shipping bags, protective foam and flexible wrapping materials, potentially giving manufacturers an alternative to some petroleum-based plastics.

The company is now finishing a factory in Mérida, Mexico, and expects to begin selling its first commercially manufactured sargassum products in approximately two months, according to an October interview its CEO, Andrea Bonilla Brunner, gave to El Economista.

For Bioplaster, the seaweed is more than an environmental nuisance. It is the raw material around which the company hopes to build a profitable packaging business.

The idea comes as Caribbean destinations face another difficult year dealing with sargassum. According to NASA, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt reached its second-highest June abundance on record in 2026, just behind 2025. The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico both recorded unprecedented regional levels.

Scientists estimated that the eastern Caribbean held about 9 million metric tons of sargassum in June, while the western Caribbean contained another 3.6 million metric tons. Not all of that seaweed reached beaches, but the enormous offshore accumulations create serious problems when winds and currents push them toward populated coastlines.

Sargassum provides an important habitat for marine life while floating at sea. Once it washes ashore in large quantities, however, the situation changes. Decomposing seaweed can produce foul-smelling gases, affect coastal ecosystems and create additional work for resorts and local authorities trying to keep beaches accessible.

The problem extends beyond Mexico to destinations including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, making it a growing concern for the wider Caribbean tourism industry.

Bioplaster's approach is to collect the seaweed and extract useful compounds from it, including alginates and cellulose, which can be combined with other biodegradable materials to manufacture packaging.

On its website, the company advertises GreenShell, a lightweight protective foam designed for shipping delicate products, along with compostable packaging films and bags.

The materials are intended for businesses that need packaging capable of protecting products during transportation without leaving behind the same persistent waste as conventional plastics.

Bioplaster says its bags can resist water, tearing and punctures, while some materials can also be made transparent, a useful feature for clothing and other retail packaging.

But the company faces a familiar obstacle for producers of environmentally friendly alternatives: price. Conventional plastics are cheap, widely available and supported by enormous manufacturing infrastructure. Biodegradable materials generally struggle to compete directly on cost.

Bioplaster acknowledges that its bags currently cost more than petroleum-based plastic. Instead, it is targeting competition with kraft paper packaging, which is already used by retailers and e-commerce businesses seeking alternatives to plastic.

The business is developing at a time when Mexican authorities are also trying to establish commercial uses for the algae.

In August, Mexico's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources outlined plans for a circular-economy development center in Puerto Morelos, designed to turn collected sargassum into products including biofuels, fertilizers and construction materials.

The ministry said researchers had identified about 190 technological processes with potential applications for sargassum, including 11 considered suitable for industrial scaling.

The commercial challenge for Bioplaster is particularly significant because producing a useful material is only the first step. Packaging companies also need consistent quality, reliable supplies and prices that customers are willing to pay.

The company's progress so far includes working products, prototypes and investment backing, but its upcoming factory will be an important test of whether a packaging material made from invasive seaweed can compete beyond small-scale production.

Meanwhile, Bioplaster is already exploring another unlikely raw material: leftover agave fibers from tequila production. It is working with distilleries in Jalisco to investigate whether the waste can be turned into paper or bioplastics.