Sway Polybags

This film is made with at least 50% TPSea™ : a game-changing resin developed by Sway that is certified 100% biobased and predominantly made with responsibly sourced seaweed. The remaining balance of the film is made with compostable polymers that provides added strength. This bag is already breaking boundaries, but it is just the beginning as Sway continuously works to increase seaweed and biobased content!

Sway Polybags are durable, protective, lightweight, and designed to protect goods in transit from production to your doorstep. While this bag performs like plastic, it lasts only as long as it's needed, returning to nature through home or industrial composting. Currently, the Sway Polybag is best suited to package dry items like apparel, outdoor gear, personal care, accessories, and home goods.

While fashion and outdoor gear brands currently use the Sway Polybag, food packaging is a north star for Sway! The material used in the Sway Polybag is called TPSea Flex™ and is made with components recognized as safe (GRAS) or FDA-approved for food-contact use. Sway is validating compliance with safety, barrier, and migration testing and will share this data as it's gathered.

Seaweed is a regenerative marine crop that contains natural polymers, the building blocks of Sway’s material portfolio. Compared to common renewable packaging inputs like corn, potato, or sugarcane, the benefits of seaweed truly go above and beyond!

Unlike terrestrial crops farmed through conventional agriculture systems, seaweed thrives off sunlight and seawater, requiring low to no inputs. It’s abundant, fast-growing, space-efficient, and available on nearly every coastline. Seaweed can also generate a lot of good as it grows: increasing habitat for marine life, boosting biodiversity, and mitigating climate change impacts like ocean acidification and erosion. Plus, new science suggests that seaweed can sequester substantial amounts of carbon.

Sway sources from a vetted global network of seaweed suppliers that responsibly farm and harvest seaweed. They have trusted sourcing partners worldwide, including Maine, Puerto Rico, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar, and beyond! Seaweed grows abundantly on nearly every global coastline, and Sway is committed to expanding and diversifying its sourcing strategy as it grows.

Sway is committed to supporting the growth of a responsible seaweed industry with transparent, ethical, and sustainable sourcing. It engages in a rigorous onboarding process to vet seaweed origin, ecosystem impacts, processing techniques, and social impact. It is developing a supplier scoring system informed by ASC-MSC standards, which evaluates each potential supplier more thoroughly. Their sourcing strategy is guided by 3 pillars:

1. Cultivation & Processing Methods: Sway prioritizes seaweed regeneratively grown in polyculture settings to replenish and restore natural habitats, making exceptions for cases like sargassum – an invasive equatorial species that Sway is exploring as an underutilized resource through the Puerto Rico Studio project. Sway works closely with its seaweed suppliers to gather data on ecosystem impacts over time, processing footprint, and much more.

2. Global & Regional Diversity: Sway uses a diverse set of red and brown seaweeds from around the world as the base of its packaging technology. Seaweed is naturally rich in polymers (agar, alginate, and carrageenan), all of which Sway uses and explores in formulation development. With diversity as a top priority, Sway helps support the positive impacts of expanded seaweed cultivation while avoiding over-reliance on any one region or species.

3. Coastal Community Impact: All seaweed used in Sway materials is cultivated by farmers who are provided fair wages and good treatment. Sway champions suppliers whose #1 priority is positive social impact, such as supporting the transition to climate-resilient coastal economies with lobster fishermen in Maine, Indigenous communities in Brazil and Chile, and tourism-reliant communities in the Caribbean. And that’s just the beginning!