Notpla Magazine

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.

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?

On 2nd June, our Chief Innovation Officer, Karlijn Sibbel, will join the third stage of an international all-female crew sailing the South Pacific. Not as observers. But as part of a global effort to better understand, and ultimately solve, one of the defining material challenges of our time: plastic.

This Earth Day, we’re taking a moment to look back on the past year at Notpla.It’s been a year shaped by progress, partnerships and a growing sense of what scale really looks like. Much of this will be brought together in our upcoming Impact Report, but for now, this feels like a moment to pause and reflect on what is already changing.

Like most workplace catering environments, everything is designed to keep things moving. Packaging is part of that system, even if it’s rarely noticed. It holds the product, presents it on the shelf and, once used, disappears into the wider flow of the day.

When thousands of people arrive at Dreamland Margate, service has to be fast, consistent and seamless. From street food traders to large-scale live events hosting up to 7,500 people, everything is designed to keep things moving.

In October 2025, during Earthshot Prize Week in Rio de Janeiro, we served espresso in something we had been quietly working toward for years: a coffee cup coated with seaweed instead of conventional plastic lining.

This Monday, a room full of scientists, doctors, policymakers and innovators came together around one shared question: What do we do next?