Marine Innovation(http://eng.marineinv.com/), a social venture supported by SK Innovation, has officially launched new eco-friendly plates made of seaweed by-products.

With two types of design, the recently launched plates of Marine Innovation will be supplied to hotels, resorts, and restaurants, which have high demand for these products. Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly food containers are expected to reduce disposable garbage that is quickly increasing along with the growth of food delivery service, especially during this pandemic time.

Marine Innovation’s new eco-friendly plates are made in the shape of scallops and shellfish, adding meaning to Marine Innovation’s mission of “finding solution for innovation from the sea”. As reported in the previous article, its eco-friendly egg tray made of seaweed by-products also won a special award at 2021 WorldStar Global Packaging Awards, the world’s most prestigious event in the field of packaging materials.

 ▲ Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly egg tray won special award at WorldStar Global Packaging Awards 2021

After the plates, Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly seaweed paper cups will be released in upcoming July. Most of the paper cups that are widely used at the moment are coated with polyethylene (PE), a plastic material, so even though they are called “paper cups”, it takes more than 50 years to be decomposed and hard to be recycled. However, Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly seaweed paper cups can solve such problems by using chitosan⁽¹⁾ coating. In addition, compared to the 175cc existing paper cups, Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly seaweed paper cups are only 165cc, thus they can save more energy and resources during the manufacturing process.

(1) Chitosan: a type of fiber taken from the exoskeleton of insects and the shells of crustaceans such as shrimp, clams, lobster (Source: www.webmd.com)

 ▲ Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly seaweed paper cups will be released in July

Marine Innovation’s own eco-friendly technology is based on the launch of innovative new products to solve environmental problems. Until now, the company has been conducting “Advanced Research on Coating Using Chitosan” with the The Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) to solve the problem of recycling PE-coated paper cups in an eco-friendly way. The coating solution developed using discarded crab shells can be biodegradable into 100% eco-friendly materials and can also reduce problems of microplastics. Once the development of the coating is completed, Marine Innovation plans to launch eco-friendly containers for various products including cup noodle containers, lunch boxes, fruit and fish packages, other food containers and cosmetics packaging containers.

With ESG management emerging as a new paradigm for corporate management, Marine Innovation’s eco-friendly container is becoming an alternative to solve environmental problems and a new driving force for creating social values.

In addition, last year, as part of the corporate social responsibility to contribute to public safety, and the company’s “Efforts for a Sustainable Society,” Marine Innovation has donated its sweet red bean jelly Dalharoo to various groups. These included the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (CDC), hospitals belonging to local governments, disaster victims in Jeolla Province, and firefighters who struggled to extinguish the big fire at an apartment in Ulsan in 2020.

 ▲ Marine Innovation’s sweet red bean jelly “Dalharoo”

Marine Innovation’s Dalharoo jelly is made of seaweed extract (Jeju red algae), and has the meaning of “a sweet day”. The product package has the design of marine animals to remind people of the living creatures suffering from the polluted sea environment. A part of Dalharoo sales profit are donated to environmental organizations and the underprivileged. Besides, the production of Dalharoo also mean more seaweed by-products will come along, allowing Marine Innovation to produce more green materials to substitute plastic and wood.