The challenge for future generations is how to live in a sustainable way. One Icelandic student may be on his way to cracking the case.

Humans are exacting a growing toll on the environment. Increasingly, there is a need to come up with sustainable ways to ensure we don’t destroy the planet for future generations. To that end, one Icelandic student may have invented a game-changing technology.

Ari Jónsson is a product design student at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, and he was disturbed by the damage human beings are doing to the environment. Consequently, he decided to put his skills to use to try and come up with a solution. His subsequent invention may hold answers for the future.

Particularly, Jónsson was concerned about the use of plastic, and plastic bottles. He said, “I read that 50 percent of plastic is used once and then thrown away so I feel there is an urgent need to find ways to replace some of the unreal amount of plastic we make, use and throw away each day.”

Jónsson has a point. According to latest estimates, annual sales of plastic bottles will top half a trillion by 2020. Furthermore, the situation is being made worse as developing countries such as China begin to use more and match the consumption of the Western world.

He was quick to recognize that there have been efforts to switch to reusable bottles. However, people’s habits have been slow to change and most plastic bottles are single use. Additionally, reusable bottles have their own problems, so they aren’t a perfect solution to the issue.

Jónsson said, “Why are we using materials that take hundreds of years to break down in nature to drink from once and then throw away?” Despite the fact that this type of plastic, PET, is easy to recycle, more and more bottles find their way into landfills and oceans.

This is because only half of all bottles are actually collected, and of that number a measly seven percent are used to make new bottles. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, as much as 13 million tons of plastic makes it to the ocean every year. Unfortunately, it’s often eaten by fish and birds.

As a matter of fact, a Ghent University study discovered that seafood lovers may actually eat 11,000 pieces of plastic in their fish annually. Not only that, but a third of all fish caught in the United Kingdom was found to have plastic in it. It’s clear that plastic bottles require a rethink.

Famous yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur said, “Shifting to a real circular economy for plastics is a massive opportunity to close the loop, save billions of dollars, and decouple plastics production from fossil fuel consumption.”

In those circumstances, it would appear Jónsson’s new invention is just what the doctor ordered. Seeing that plastic bottles often get into the ocean, he decided to change the composition of the bottles. Subsequently, he changed the material from plastic to something quite different.

Jónsson was inspired by certain properties of red algae, in particular its cell structure. Using agar powder derived from the algae, he could make bottles. In essence, when agar powder is added to water, it will set into a jelly once it cools.

While it is filled with water, the algae bottle will keep its structural integrity. In contrast, once the bottle is empty it will begin to shrink and decompose. Jónsson’s design is even edible, since it’s made from algae, but it will act as a laxative if you eat too much.

When building his prototypes, the Icelander discovered that should a bottle be in need of repair, he could reheat his mixture and try to mold it again. On the negative side, water kept in these algae bottles takes on some of the taste of the bottle. Obviously, this might put some people off.

Jónsson said, “I can’t claim that this is perfect solution for our problem with plastic bottles. But it’s a start and an idea that hopefully helps us look at new ways to solve the problem… the more ways we can tackle this issue the better.”

More and more, designers are trying to find new materials for projects that will biodegrade more easily. Like Jónsson, many are using algae or seaweed as construction materials for a variety of items. This includes architectural cladding, yarn or even furniture and lampshades.

In addition, the sea might also offer an answer to increasing sustainable energy generation. Correspondingly, algae may be able to act as a power source when burned. Due to its low requirements for growth, it has a much smaller carbon footprint than other potential biofuels.

The practice of farming algae is known as algaculture. As an illustration, algae can be grown using wastewater and is totally biodegradable. Although the energy is extracted from algae through burning, it only releases CO₂ that it has absorbed recently, so doesn’t add to the overall levels in the atmosphere.

Due to algae’s very high yields, it can produce a large amount of fuel using only a small area. In this case, the Department of Energy worked out that if you replaced all gasoline supply with algae biofuel, you’d need 15,000 square miles of land to grow algae. That’s only 0.42 percent of the United States’ land.

In the United Kingdom, other groups are working on reducing the number of bottles that make it into the sea. Hugo Tagholm, of conservation group Surfers Against Sewage, said, “The plastic pollution crisis rivals the threat of climate change as it pollutes every natural system and an increasing number of organisms.”

He continued, “Whilst the production of throwaway plastics has grown dramatically… the systems to contain, control, reuse and recycle them just haven’t kept pace.” To this end, the group is trying to introduce a refund deposit scheme for plastic bottles to encourage recycling.