Notpla Magazine

Last night, Notpla was recognised with two Footprint Awards, celebrating both our latest packaging innovation and the natural material that inspires everything we do.

As we celebrate World Oceans Day, Notpla Chief Innovation Officer Karlijn Sibbel is halfway through a very different kind of journey.

At Notpla, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future. How materials should behave. How packaging should disappear. How businesses can move beyond simply managing waste and start designing systems that work more closely with nature.

As part of a global expedition mapping plastic pollution back to its source, our Chief Innovation Officer, Karlijn Sibbel, will be joining an all-women crew sailing the South Pacific this June.

We’re excited to share that Notpla has been shortlisted for two categories at the Footprint Awards 2026.

For decades, the food-to-go packaging has looked almost exactly the same. Sandwich wedges lined with plastic film. Wrap boxes layered with fossil-fuel coatings. Deli packaging designed for convenience, but built around materials that were never designed to disappear.

By Ayla, Seaweed Expert at Notpla Seaweed is one of those things most of us recognise, but very few of us really understand. It washes up on beaches, wraps around sushi, and quietly exists all around us, including beneath the surface of our oceans. But behind that familiarity lies something far more complex.

A new conversation around plastic is starting to emerge . Swap with Notpla started with a simple question: What should food actually be served in?

Scientists from Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) have returned from Svalbard, where they’ve deployed an experiment designed to answer one critical question: How do different materials behave when they leave the lab and enter the real world?