Over the past week, we’ve seen global energy markets in turmoil, the IEA releasing 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, and several Asian petrochemical manufacturers declaring force majeure as they cancel runs at their refineries.

If you run a beauty brand, it’s no secret that everything from your ingredients to your packaging to the energy that runs your contract manufacturer’s facility can likely be traced back to barrels of crude oil. But how will it affect your bottom line, if at all? We decided to crunch some numbers and try to find out.

The Petroleum Audit

We took a standard mass-market body lotion, the kind you’d find on any drugstore shelf for under $10, and tagged every input that is derived from, or dependent on, petroleum. This includes not just the obvious ones like petrolatum and mineral oil, but the less visible dependencies such as silicones synthesized through petroleum intermediates, synthetic polymers built from petroleum-derived monomers, PEG emulsifiers, synthetic fragrance compounds, and the preservative systems that rely on petrochemical feedstocks.

Then we looked beyond the formula. First up: packaging. Nearly all these mass-market lotions are in HDPE bottles (petroleum-derived), have polypropylene caps and pumps (petroleum-derived) and adhesive labels (petroleum-derived). Finally, we added in the fossil fuel energy powering the contract manufacturing line (~57% of the US grid is still fossil fuel) and the diesel fuel that moves the finished product from factory to warehouse to store.

Here’s what we found.

Inside the formula: approximately 14% of the formula by weight is directly petroleum-derived (petrolatum, silicones, synthetic fragrance, synthetic emulsifiers). When you include ingredients where one part of the molecule is synthesized from petroleum feedstocks, that number grows to roughly 27% of the formula by weight. In cost terms, about 40–45% of raw material spend traces back to petroleum-derived chemistry.

Packaging: the primary container—bottle, cap, pump—is 100% petroleum-derived plastic. This is often the single largest petroleum-exposed cost component per unit, sometimes larger than all the petroleum-derived ingredients combined.

Manufacturing and freight: with the US grid running roughly 57% fossil fuel and freight moving almost entirely on diesel, these add another layer of petroleum exposure to every unit produced and shipped.

When you add it all up, roughly two-thirds of the total cost to produce and ship one unit of a typical mass-market body lotion is built on petroleum-derived inputs.

What this means for your COGS

An important caveat: exposure does not equal price sensitivity. A 50% oil spike will not produce a 32% increase in your COGS overnight.

The real-world chain from crude oil to cosmetic ingredient is long and has many buffers. Ingredient suppliers may be locked into long-term contracts, manufacturers may absorb margin hits rather than raise prices to brand customers. The price transmission mechanism is slow and uneven.

But if two-thirds of your cost structure sits on a petroleum foundation, then you should expect the oil price shock to ripple through to your bottom line eventually. Short disruptions get buffered. Long ones don’t.

Long Global Supply Chains are Inherently Fragile

This is the fourth major supply chain shock in five years. COVID shut down factories and stretched ingredient lead times from weeks to months. The Suez Canal blockage halted $9 billion in daily trade. The Russia-Ukraine conflict tripled European gas prices and rippled through chemical manufacturing for a year. Tariffs have reshuffled cross-border sourcing with the rules still changing. And now the Strait of Hormuz - a global gateway for oil and gas - is effectively closed, with Brent crude up over 50% in weeks.

Each of these events was unpredictable in its specifics. But the pattern is entirely predictable: if your supply chain is built on petroleum-derived inputs, logistics, and packaging, you are structurally exposed to geopolitical, environmental, and economic shocks that you cannot foresee or control. What alternatives do you have?

What Resilience Looks Like

Today there are many ingredients, materials, and sourcing strategies that can reduce your petroleum dependency. Think of this not as a sustainability exercise (though it is climate positive too), but as a supply chain resilience plan.

Bio-based raw materials: from vegetable glycerin, to fermentation-derived ingredients like bio-based surfactants, and next generation all natural rheology modifiers (plug: have you heard about Big Kelp Flex, our seaweed-derived cellulose biopolymer?), there are lots of options reaching performance parity with synthetic materials that have dominated formulations for decades. We mapped this landscape in detail in our recent series on natural polymer alternatives.

Domestic and regenerative sourcing: Ingredients grown domestically—kelp from US waters, oats from US farms, botanicals from traceable supply chains—don’t transit the Strait of Hormuz or require oil or gas as a feedstock. Regenerative crops like kelp, grow with limited inputs: no land, no freshwater, no fertilizers, no pesticides. These new supply chains are traceable, on-shore, and insulated from the geopolitical risks.

Packaging alternatives: PCR (post-consumer recycled) plastics, bio-based polyethylene, aluminum, glass, and refillable systems all reduce petroleum packaging exposure. Each has trade-offs, but the options are more viable at scale today than even a few years ago.

Energy and freight: The US grid is evolving. In California, 66% of the grid is now powered by clean energy. Nationwide, solar now accounts for half of all new generating capacity. Manufacturers with renewable energy contracts are already partially insulated from fossil fuel volatility. Freight remains petroleum-dependent for now, a weak point in all supply chains.

A (Beautiful) Silver Lining

Every supply chain shock divides the beauty industry into two groups: those scrambling to manage the fallout, and those who already made the structural changes that insulate them from it. The brands that have reformulated away from petroleum-derived polymers or switched bio-based packaging are unlikely to be in emergency calls debugging their supply chains.

Here’s a useful mental model when tackling this issue. Think of petroleum dependency like technical debt in software: it accumulates quietly, doesn’t cause problems most of the time, and then one day the system breaks under stress and you discover exactly how much you’ve been borrowing against the future. Inertia is hard to overcome; diversifying ingredient sourcing, exploring bio-based materials, all takes time, effort and investment. But if you don’t do it, then you’re adding to that debt and the principal payments come due when the next crisis hits.

The beauty industry has spent the last decade asking: how do we make our products cleaner? The Covid pandemic and this oil shock is forcing us to reckon with a harder, more consequential question: how do we make our supply chains resilient?

The good news is that the answers are increasingly the same. Bio-based, domestically sourced, regenerative ingredients don’t just satisfy consumers and regulators. They also don’t depend on a 21-mile-wide strait staying open.

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That leaves us with Part 4: what are the options? In today’s post, we map the natural polymer landscape to find out what’s available, what works, what doesn’t, and what the ideal solution would look like.

What We Need From a Carbomer Replacement

Before evaluating alternatives, it’s worth setting out what a true carbomer replacement would need to deliver.

• Performance: carbomers have three critical performance characteristics: (i) extremely high water absorbency - 1000x its weight in water, (ii) excellent shear thinning at low shear rates, without a plateau, (iii) ability to suspend heavy particles like mineral sunscreen actives. A perfect replacement should have these properties and also be pH stable from 3-12, electrolyte tolerant, and thermally stable.

• Compliance: any carbomer replacement needs to fall outside of EU “synthetic polymer microparticle” classification, either because it’s a natural polymer or because it’s proven biodegradable. And it should be compatible with established no-no lists at major retailers.

• Easy-to-Use: finally, the ideal replacement would have comparable cost-in-use, similar processing requirements (i.e. no specialized equipment or processes), and a sustainable and traceable supply chain.

That’s a demanding list and explains why many natural alternatives ask the formulator to compromise on artistry.

The Current Natural Options

Let’s walk through the most frequently used natural alternatives to review strengths and limitations.

Xanthan Gum is the default choice for “natural” formulations seeking rheology modification.

• Strengths: Clean-label compatible, widely available, low cost, good emulsion stability, pH stable across 2-12 range

• Limitations: gets slimy at higher concentrations and requires high shear stress to break viscosity, leaving a tacky feeling on the skin. Can’t suspend heavy particles without significant viscosity. Requires predispersion in a glycerin / glycol to improve yields but also creates more complexity, cost and waste during manufacturing.

• Our verdict: Adequate for simple thickening applications but fails to deliver carbomer-like performance in suspensions and textures.

Sclerotium Gum is a fermentation-derived polysaccharide sometimes positioned as a premium natural alternative.

• Strengths: silky texture profile, clean-label compatible, good emulsion stability.

• Limitations: No suspension capabilities in low-viscosity systems. High cost-in-use compared to xanthan gum and can be difficult to work with in formulation.

• Our verdict: Better texture than xanthan, but the premium price is hard to justify given the performance limitations.

Guar Gum is a galactomannan polysaccharide extracted from guar beans.

• Strengths: Natural, low cost, widely available.

• Limitations: Low water absorbency (10-15x its weight in water) which translates to poor shear thinning and no meaningful suspension capability.

• Our verdict: Generally inferior to xanthan gum and not a serious candidate for replacing carbomer.

Traditional Cellulose Derivatives include hydroxyethyl cellulose, hydroxypropyl cellulose, and other such wood-derived cellulose materials.

• Strengths: naturally-derived with established supply chains and familiar to formulators.

• Limitations: Wood-derived cellulose has short fibers that limit water absorbency leading to poor shear thinning, hard-to-dispense formulas, and limited suspensions.

• Our verdict: incremental improvement over gums in some applications, but not carbomer-equivalent.

Modified Natural Polymers are chemically modified starches and celluloses like carboxymethyl cellulose designed to improve performance

• Strengths: performance can approach synthetics in some applications

• Limitations: “modification” may fall foul of EU regulations depending on the degradation / solubility testing, not considered clean in the minds of consumers

• Our verdict: these polymers fall into a gray zone that neither delivers performance nor regulatory / clean label compliance

Seaweed Polymers: The New Kid On The Block

Cellulose is the skeleton of plant life. These long chains of glucose structures are one of the most abundant organic molecules on earth. They bundle together into fibers, whose shape and length, and thus performance, depends entirely on what the plant needs to do.

Land plants have evolved to resist gravity. Trees grow upwards, holding up branches and leaves. So their cellulose fibers are relatively short and thick, packed tightly into building blocks to create rigidity.

Seaweed evolved to resist tides and wave action (there’s no gravity to fight underwater!). Their fibers are long, thin and flexible, creating incredible tensile strength. Seaweed can be many feet long but just sway in the current without snapping.

At the molecular level, this manifests in the fiber’s aspect ratio (length vs. width). Wood-based cellulose fibers are short with low aspect ratios, while seaweed fibers are hundreds of times longer with high aspect ratios (see the electron microscope images below).

Unique Structure = Unique Function

This structural difference turns out to matter a lot in how the ingredient performs in formulations. Seaweed cellulose can absorb up to 600x its weight in water, putting it into the superabsorbent polymer range. These long fibers create smooth visco-gel structures allowing for shear thinning and shear stress properties that mirror carbomer behavior.

This makes seaweed cellulose perfect for:

• Suspension of heavy particles: you can suspend mineral sunscreen actives in formulations and rest assured it will spray. This was essentially impossible with traditional natural polymers.

• Beautiful textures: seaweed cellulose has a shear thinning/stress profile on par with carbomer. The viscosity drops immediately when rubbed into the skin, leaving no residue (aka “soaping”). Formulators can create unparalleled sensory experiences with natural polymers.

• Formulation flexibility: the material works across the pH range (3-12), tolerates electrolytes, processes at cold or hot temperatures. It’s easy to work with, meaning both bench chemists and production teams will be happy.

The science behind this new class of materials has advanced rapidly over the past decade, and improvements in modern biotechnology have made commercial-scale production of high-purity seaweed cellulose at competitive prices possible.

So what will you create?

Beauty, like all industries, doesn’t stand still. Amid the seemingly endless flow of new products, here are brands and launches that define an era. These (rare) category creators are the ones that see a convergence before everyone else does. They match shifting consumer expectations to maturing technology, and something that seemed implausible last year, suddenly becomes inevitable.

When Apple launched the iPhone, they didn’t set out to build a better phone. They realized that advances in touchscreens, mobile processors, and wireless networks had all matured at the same time. So now they could put a computer in your pocket. They gave consumers something that consumers didn’t even know was possible.

Likewise, when the clean beauty movement started, these pioneers understood the scientific evidence but also realized that the technological solutions already existed. They redefined what consumers could expect from their products. The brands that set those standards created category leadership.

But no industry stands still. In beauty, the next frontier isn’t just “free from bad stuff.” It’s about expanding what you can create. Natural polymers have now crossed the performance threshold meaning that the trade-off that defined the last decade of clean formulation is ending.

The material shift underway is bigger than one regulation and bigger than one product category and bigger than just the beauty industry. When the underlying materials change, it creates an opportunity to rethink everything that is built on top of them. The world is at the beginning of a platform shift away from synthetic polymers, in beauty, but also beyond.

The window to create is open. Are you going to write a new playbook? Or read someone else’s?

And in case you missed the other posts in our series, here is Part 1 (our love letter to carbomers) and Part 2 (our deep dive into EU regulations on microplastics).

US Consumers: Microplastics are a Health Concern

For consumers, microplastics started out primarily as an environmental concern. We were bombarded with images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, sea turtles swimming with trash, and distant beaches littered with plastic debris. But more recently, microplastics have become personal.

Scientists have published studies proving that microplastics are commonly found in human blood and can bioaccumulate in our organs (more on the latest scientific evidence below). The media conversation has rapidly shifted to the impact on our health. Everyone now wonders: what’s already in my body and how can I avoid yet more microplastics?

For brand leaders, paying attention to this shifting landscape is important because where the consumer goes, the regulators often follow. For example:

• Mid 2010s: The Microbead Era. Consumers revolt against the visible plastic beads in their exfoliating scrubs. Campaigns like Beat the Microbead had a simple solution: ban the beads.

• 2015-2023: Regulators Respond. The Microbead-Free Waters Act was passed by Congress in 2015 and the EU followed soon thereafter, removing these products from the shelves.

In 2025, a Grove/5 Gyres survey found that 77% of Americans have heard of microplastics, and 90% of them are concerned about health effects. The same survey showed, however, that most people don’t understand what microplastics are, where they come from or specifically how they impact our health.

So let’s take a look at what the literature says about microplastics’ impact on human health.

What the Science Actually Shows

It’s important to state the obvious upfront: like all areas of emerging science, when it comes to microplastics and human health there are still many unknowns. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the evidence, it just means that most likely don’t have the full picture.

What we know

Microplastics have been detected in human tissue with increasing frequency. A 2022 study found microplastics in nearly 80% of blood samples tested. Subsequent research has identified microplastic particles in lung tissue, placental tissue, and most recently, brain tissue. Most notably, scientists found that micro- and nanoplastic concentrations in the brain increased by ~50% from 2016 to 2024.

A 2024 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients with micro- and nanoplastics detected in arterial plaque had elevated cardiovascular risk, though the researchers were careful to note that the 4.5x higher risk is a correlation, not proven causation. Similarly, a 2020 study showed that microplastics can trigger inflammatory responses, oxidative stress, and potential endocrine disruption in cellular and animal models.

In one of the most provocative (and headline grabbing) studies, scientists estimated that humans may ingest up to 5 grams of plastic weekly, roughly the weight of a credit card, though this figure is debated and depends heavily on methodology and assumptions.

What we don’t know

Despite accumulating evidence, the long-term health effects of chronic low-level microplastic exposure remain uncertain. There is some evidence that ingested microplastics can transit the gut. But given that there is no known biological mechanism for removing them or breaking them down, it appears that bioaccumulation in lipid-rich tissues, and especially the brain, is likely.

Furthermore, given the range of contaminants in our food, our water, and our air, it is also unclear where microplastics sit in the hierarchy of harmful substances. Are they relatively more or less harmful than PFAS or phthalates? Should we focus more on eliminating one over the other?

Finally, it’s worth noting that the contribution of cosmetics to the total body burden of microplastics is also unclear. Microplastics enter our bodies from food packaging, water, textiles, dust, and countless other sources. What percentage comes specifically from rinse-off or leave-on beauty products or color cosmetics? Are some product formats better or worse than others?

In essence, the science is still emerging and the data isn’t yet precise enough for us to be certain.

Is “Microplastics-Free” the Next Wave in Clean Beauty?

The precautionary principle often drives the consumer mindset and changes in behavior: even if the science isn’t conclusive, many people see the headline and decide to buy alternative products that they perceive to be better for their long-term health and the wellbeing of loved ones. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before in beauty:

• Parabens: A 2004 study detected trace amounts of parabens in 20 breast tumor tissue samples. Regulators (EU SCCS/1652/23, December 2023) and experts have extensively studied parabens and found them safe at recommended use levels (0.4%-0.8%). Yet “paraben-free” became a selling point and brands rapidly reformulated.

• Sulfates: Likewise, sodium lauryl sulfate and related surfactants fell out of favor following viral internet claims that it was a carcinogen. Despite extensive reviews showing that to be false, “sulfate-free” became a new trend in shampoos and is now a $3bn+ category.

To date, the plastics debate in beauty has mostly focused on packaging. Forward-thinking brands have offered consumers recyclable materials, eliminated unnecessary extras, offered refillable options, and supported upcycling of materials.

But is the actual formula the next frontier? Could consumers rapidly switch to demanding formulas without synthetic polymers? Some brands - like Nivea for example - have already phased out synthetic polymers in favor of biodegradable alternatives. This is likely in preparation for the upcoming EU bans on “synthetic polymer microparticles”. But it’s also because consumer perceptions are rapidly shifting.

At the retail level, carbomers and acrylates are not yet on the no-no lists. But with EU regulations in place and consumer awareness rising, it may be just a matter of time before they are added.

Perception Is Reality

Whether the science is settled or not, consumer perception is shifting. “Microplastics” are now synonymous with pictures of plastic particles in our brains that technical explanations cannot easily neutralize. In the attention economy, brands have to navigate this difficult space between scientific fact and consumer perceptions. Forming a defensive crouch and saying the science is uncertain seems less likely to win out versus an approach that embraces shifting consumer sentiment, (re)formulates proactively, and positions products and messaging ahead of the trend.

The brands that get ahead of this curve won’t just be compliant, they’ll likely own the narrative. Next week in the final post in this series, we will examine the natural polymer landscape: what’s actually available, what works, what doesn’t, and what the future of cosmetic formulation looks like when the performance-versus-natural trade-off starts to dissolve.

This week we’re diving into EU regulations on synthetic polymers. It’s a bit dry and technical, but you’ll want to know the ins and outs of this before you start new product development. So go grab another coffee and let’s get started!

The Basics

In late 2023, the European Commission published Commission Regulation 2023/2055, restricting the use of “microplastics intentionally added to products”. These rules are formally an amendment to Annex XVII of REACH (the foundational EU legislation designed to protect human health and the environment from chemical risks).

Critically, these EU regulations use the “precautionary principle” which shifts the burden of proof onto the manufacturers who have to demonstrate the chemicals do no harm before the substance is sold. This stance is markedly different from the US, where the onus is on the government to prove the product causes harm after the product is already in the market.

Regulation 2023/2055 specifically restricts the use of “synthetic polymer microparticles”. These are broadly defined as:

• Solid polymers that are synthetic or chemically modified

• In particles ≤5mm (or length ≤15mm with length-to-diameter ratio >3)

• Present at ≥0.01% concentration to confer a “sought-after characteristic”

This definition means not just bans on microbeads and glitter, but also many of the functional synthetic polymers workhorses used for thickeners, stabilizers, film formers and suspensions in formulas.

Are Carbomers Actually Covered?

Given that carbomers disperse in water, it’s fair to ask: are they actually even covered by these regulations? Now for the fun part. A compound is exempt from the regulation if it passes one of the following four tests:

1. Natural: “polymers that are the result of a polymerisation process that has taken place in nature, independently of the process through which they have been extracted, which are not chemically modified substances”

2. Solubility: “polymers that have a solubility >2g/L as proved in accordance with Appendix 16”

3. Degradation: “polymers that are degradable as proved in accordance with Appendix 15”

4. Inorganic: “polymers that do not contain carbon atoms in their chemical structure”

Carbomers are made up of long chains of cross-linked acrylic acid units. When formulating, a chemist will add them to water and then bring the pH up to neutral. This neutralization step deprotonates the carboxylic acid group and causes the chains to repel each other, creating a matrix to trap the water. The result: they swell dramatically creating beautiful gels.

According to Appendix 16, a compound is soluble when it dissolves into solution at the molecular level at 20°C, pH 7, 10 g/L loading, over 24 hours. Carbomers fail this test. Their crosslinked structures remain intact. Being water swellable does not make them water soluble.

What about degradation? Here carbomers also fail. The criteria set out in Appendix 15 provide mineralization thresholds depending on timeframe and the testing environment. This ranges from >60% mineralization for rapid screens with up to >90% for long-term degradation studies.

At this point, studies have shown that carbomers are non-biodegradable - they are not broken down or metabolized, demonstrating biological persistence. Again, the cross-linked networks mean that their structural chemistry is resistant to biological degradation.

Bottom line: Carbomers are classified as “synthetic polymer microplastics” under this regulation. There are no exemptions that allow their continued use in consumer beauty after the transitional periods expire.

Once you absorb that, the next question is, when do all the changes happen?

The Three Compliance Cliffs

The restriction formally entered into force on October 17, 2023. But the regulations provided transition periods for different types of products:

• October 16, 2027: Rinse-off products such as cleansers, shampoos, conditioners, body washes, scrubs, masks

• October 16, 2029: Leave-on products such as moisturizers, serums, sunscreens (non-spray), lotions, treatments, eye creams

• October 16, 2035: Color cosmetics such as make-up, lip, and nail products. These have the longest runway, but there’s a catch: from October 17, 2031, these products must carry the label “this product contains microplastics” to continue being sold.

For multinational brands with products across all categories, this creates cascading pressure with more than just hero products needing reformulation.

There are a few cases where the regulations allow for temporary exemptions (or “derogations” in the official jargon):

• Derogation 4: where the compound is used in industrial, medical, food, or diagnostic device applications

• Derogation 5: where the compound is either demonstrated to have been permanently modified during consumer use, technically contained so that it is not released into the natural environment, or permanently incorporated into a solid matrix

For each of these exemptions there are annual reporting requirements to ECHA, labelling requirements to ensure proper use and disposal.

Please make it simple!

Still with me? Or totally confused? Fear not! We’ve created a flow diagram so you can figure out if your beloved polymer of choice is allowed or not.

Download the pdf version here!

I told you this wasn’t straightforward! Clearly, this isn’t “business as usual with a bit of extra paperwork.” Not knowing which polymers are allowed or banned means ongoing regulatory exposure, annual reporting obligations, and—for color cosmetics—four years of mandatory “contains microplastics” labeling that no brand wants on their packaging.

Why This Matters for US Brands

If you’ve made it this far (well done!) you may be thinking: this is an EU regulation and I run a US brand, so why should I care? There are several reasons to consider these new rules.

Future proof your formulations: If you’re developing new products or already selling in both the US and the EU, then reformulating once for global compliance is more cost-effective than managing dual formulations, inventory, and supply chains.

Regulatory anticipation: The EU restriction previews where US regulation could head next. California and New York have already banned microbeads and there is new microplastic legislation under discussion.

Consumer perception: US consumers read the same health headlines about microplastics in human blood and brain tissue as European consumers.

Retail buyer pressure: Most US retailers now have some version of a “restricted substance list” and as microplastics awareness grows, synthetic polymers will likely be added.

What This Means for Your Decisions

The new EU rules are not ambiguous: carbomers and acrylates are covered, the deadlines are set, and the compliance burden for continued use is significant. So bottom line, reformulation is the most obvious answer.

If regulations are creating a forcing function, the next question is: what do consumers really think of microplastics and natural polymers? Find out next week in Part 3 of our series.

You’re standing at the bench, watching a carbomer gel come together. The viscosity builds exactly as expected. The clarity is perfect. The texture — elegant, non-tacky, a water-break feel that consumers love but can’t articulate — emerges like it was always meant to be there.

For decades, carbomers have turned formulators into artists. They gave them control, precision and the ability to create textures and experiences that natural polymers simply couldn’t match.

To be clear: this isn’t a hit piece on carbomers. It’s an honest reckoning with what they gave us as an industry and what we’ve had to accept in return.

What Carbomers Actually Do

If you’ve spent any time in cosmetic formulation, you already know the answer. But it’s worth articulating because the list is remarkable:

• Water absorbency: Carbomers absorb 500-1,000 times their weight in water. Compare that to xanthan gum at 20-40x or guar gum at 10-15x. This isn’t an incremental difference; it’s an order of magnitude.

• Shear thinning: Carbomers thin beautifully under shear, even at very low shear rates, with no low-shear plateau. This makes them ideal for spray applications; the product flows through the nozzle, then immediately recovers viscosity on the skin.

• pH stability: Functional across pH 4-9, covering virtually every cosmetic application.

• Electrolyte tolerance: Unlike many natural polymers, carbomers can handle the salt loads common in cosmetic formulations.

• Texture: Clean, non-tacky, with that characteristic quick-break feel. The viscosity drops immediately when you rub it on skin, leaving no residue.

• Low use levels: 0.1-0.6% is typically all you need, keeping formulation costs manageable.

This combination of properties isn’t just useful. It’s why carbomers became the default choice for an entire generation of formulators. When you needed a rheology modifier that would simply work, you reached for a carbomer.

The Xanthan Gum Compromise

And then the conversation changed. As “clean beauty” emerged and brands began pursuing natural formulations, R&D teams faced a familiar question: what’s the natural alternative? The answer, more often than not, was xanthan gum.

Xanthan gum is natural, widely available and cost-effective. It’s been used in food and cosmetics for decades, and, on paper, it seems like a reasonable substitute. But in practice, formulators discovered what the data always showed: xanthan gum is not carbomer.

• The texture problem: Xanthan gum gets slimy at higher concentrations. The gluey, stringy quality that works fine in a salad dressing becomes a liability in a face cream. The sensory experience is fundamentally different and consumers notice it, even if they can’t explain why the product feels “off.”

• The suspension problem: Xanthan gum can’t suspend heavy particles at low viscosity. If you’re making a mineral sunscreen with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, you need significant viscosity to keep those particles distributed. Which means using a lot of xanthan gum and creating a thick, heavy product rather than a light, sprayable one.

• The shear thinning problem: Xanthan requires much higher shear stress to break viscosity. On the rheology curve, you can see it holding onto that tackiness far longer than carbomers. The result: a product that doesn’t feel like it “releases” when you rub it into the skin, leaving consumers with that “sticky” or “tacky” experience.

• The formulation problem: Xanthan is finicky to work with. pH sensitivity, pre-dispersing with a glycol to avoid fish eyes, careful hydration requirements, temperature considerations—the production process becomes more complex, more prone to failure, more expensive to perfect in development.

None of this is news to anyone who’s spent time at the bench. This “natural tax” has meant accepting inferior sensory performance as the cost of having a clean label. It’s one of the unspoken realities of our industry.

What Suffers: The Artistry

Formulation isn’t just chemistry. At its best, it’s artistry. The best formulators create textures and sensory experiences that delights consumers when they open a jar or when they spray their SPF on their arm.

Carbomers enabled that artistry by being controllable. You could dial in the texture, the exact rheology profile, the spray pattern. You didn’t have to worry about trade offs. You could dream and do what you do best - create!

• Low-viscosity suspensions that still hold heavy minerals that you can spray rather than just squeeze from a tube? Sure!

• Water-break textures that feel light and fresh in a cream but transform to water on contact with skin? Done!

• Whipped textures that hold their shape in the jar but melt on application? No problems!

• Stable emulsions across temperature variations, humidity changes, and the indignities of shipping and storage. Easy!

When formulators switched to xanthan gum and other natural alternatives, they didn’t just lose performance. They lost creative freedom. The formulation had to work within the constraints of the polymer, rather than the polymer enabling whatever the formulator imagined.

The Quiet Trade-Off

Of course, there’s a reason this conversation is happening now rather than twenty years ago.

Carbomers are synthetic polymers, derived from petrochemicals. For a long time, this wasn’t something the industry talked about much. They worked, they were safe, they were cost-effective. What else mattered?

But more recently, consumers care more about what’s in their products. Today, it’s not only the actives they’re buying for, but the functional ingredients too that make up the bulk of a formulation. If microbeads were the first phase, then synthetic polymers are likely next. The phrase “liquid plastics” has begun appearing in beauty media, describing synthetic polymers that persist in the environment after they wash down the drain.

Regulatory frameworks are beginning to classify these materials differently and phase them out. (Sneak peek: in our next post we’ll be diving deep into the EU regulation 2023/2025). What was once a minor line item on an INCI list is rapidly becoming a compliance question, threatening top line revenues for billions of dollars of existing products on the shelf.

Retail buyers are asking questions they didn’t ask five years ago. “Clean beauty” standards at major retailers now extend beyond the legacy targets like parabens or sulfates to include considerations about synthetic polymers.

We don’t need to litigate whether these concerns are fully justified or precisely articulated. The market has made its position clear: the landscape for synthetic polymers is changing.

The Question Worth Asking

For years, the question facing formulators has been: performance or natural? Artistry or clean label? It’s been a genuine dilemma, because the natural alternatives genuinely haven’t matched what carbomers could do. The choice was real, and the trade-offs were painful.

But luckily, technology is moving fast. Innovations in natural materials means that the trade-off between performance and 100% plant derived is actually an artifact of where the science was, rather than where it is today.

So a more pertinent question is this: what becomes possible when the constraints that defined formulation for the past thirty years start to dissolve?

In the next three posts in this series will dig into the regulatory landscape reshaping polymer choices, the consumer perception shift around “liquid plastics,” and what the natural polymer space actually looks like today.

I shared this perspective with Annie (CEO & Founder of Credo Beauty who are true pioneers in the clean beauty space) and it turned out she thought the same! So we decided to write an opinion piece laying out an agenda for a New Clean Beauty Manifesto. In our opinion, this agenda has five pillars:

1. True clean starts at the source. Instead of simply “natural” ingredients, the goal should be responsible sourcing, whether plant-based, lab-grown, or synthetic. Biotechnology now allows us to make high-performance ingredients from sugarcane, algae, or yeast (as examples) instead of petroleum. Moreover, zero-waste processing isn’t optional anymore; upcycling waste streams reduces a product’s total impact. These advanced bio-based materials reduce our carbon footprint, cut our impact on land and water use, and boost climate resilience.

2. Packaging is part of the product. Consumers see it first, and too often, it’s the only thing that lasts. Systems-level packaging innovation like using post-consumer recycled plastics or refillable aluminum systems can address the lifecycle of a product (not just what it looks like). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that only 14% of plastic packaging globally is recycled. Closing that gap requires both material innovation and infrastructure collaboration.

3. Radical transparency in manufacturing. Most brands can’t tell you how much energy, water, or waste their contract manufacturers generate. That’s changing fast. New traceability platforms, carbon accounting tools, and blockchain-enabled supply chains make it possible to see upstream impacts in real time. Transparency should not be about overwhelming consumers with data, but rather about measuring what matters, building trust, and demonstrating commitment to continuously improving.

4. Iteration as a principle. We all know that perfection can stall progress. In this next wave of clean, our mindset needs to be constant improvement: beta-testing new materials, measuring impact, and evolving solutions. In software, updates are constant, and, in our view, beauty should be no different. A moisturizer reformulated with Big Kelp Flex this year could use a carbon-negative emollient next year. Clean 2.0 is iterative, not absolute.

5. Consumer honesty. Aspirational campaigns are easy to ignore but tangible metrics aren’t. When brands report that their products contain 70% post-consumer recycled material, or that each refill saves 100 grams of plastic and 500 liters of water, those facts stick. They’re measurable, verifiable, and communicable. Clean 2.0 requires clear numbers to verify claims and show progress.

In the Beauty Matter OpEd we lay out the argument in more detail. But don’t think of this list as a definitive declaration but rather as a departure point, a place to begin the conversation. Got thoughts? I’d love to hear them!

Kelp CoLab: accelerating beauty innovation

About a year ago, our friends at Greenwave asked an important question: how can we help build markets - and by extension, demand - for kelp? Several conversations later and the Kelp CoLab program was born. This 10-month initiative aims to drive adoption of kelp-based ingredients in beauty and beyond.

The inaugural cohort is focussed on beauty. Greenwave has invited Macro Oceans to be its exclusive beauty R&D partner while Unilever Foundry is providing expertise and market insights. Up to 10 brands will be selected to pursue a fully-funded kelp innovation project. Topics include everything from new product development to solving formulation challenges to running new clinical trials.

We are super excited at the brands that have been selected. Stay tuned for more updates over the coming months!

See you at Supplier’s Day

If you’re going to be in Long Beach this week for Supplier’s Day, stop by Catalyst Technologies’ booth #350-355 or send us a note to meet up - we’d love to learn more about what you’re working on and show you some cool new Big Kelp Flex demos!

Try these products, feel kelptastic!

I’m often asked about my favorite products that use kelp. There are so many great products out there, but here are a few of my favorites:

• EverBoost Multi-Peptide Scalp Serum is like an awesome fertilizer for your scalp by Everist

• Day-to-Day is a revitalizing shampoo for gentle cleansing by Fat & The Moon

Try them out and I promise you’ll feel as kelptastic as I do!

Food companies have responded with new products (and reformulations of old favorites!) with cleaner labels. This creates a never ending challenge for food scientists to use healthier and more sustainable ingredients to meet these new consumer preferences.

The Icing Challenge

Consider an example: the icing on many baked goods (e.g. donuts, cookies etc) is often made using gelatin, an ingredient commonly derived from animal-based collagen. Food companies use gelatin because it very effectively thickens and structures the icing which remains stable during the baking process.

Consumers have recently become less enthusiastic about gelatin. Replacing it, however, is not easy as there are few food ingredients which give you that perfect texture and mouth feel as well as the heat-stability you need to back the perfect donut. Enter alginate.

What is alginate?

Brown seaweed is packed full of different types of carbohydrates (see here, an example from Alaska). There are complex polysaccharides like fucoidan and laminarin as well as mannitol, a simple sugar alcohol. But the majority of the carbohydrates are alginate (a biopolymer uniquely found in brown seaweed) and cellulose (the most common structural building block in plants).

Alginate was first discovered back in the 1880s by E.C.C. Stanford, a British chemist. Continued research showed that alginate is in fact a linear co-polymer made up of repeating blocks of mannuronic and guluronic acid, the so-called “M/G blocks”. The M/G ratio varies from species to species to create a wide range of functional properties such as viscosity, gel strength, and thermal stability.

Food scientists have long used alginate and other hydrocolloids to create high-performance texture blends for food. Its ability to thicken and gel, as well as maintaining stability during heat / thaw cycles, means that it can be used in a wide range of food products - everything from ice cream to sauces to bakery cream fillings and beyond.

Learn more about alginates from Colin Hepburn, CTO of Macro Oceans

Hello, MacroForm^TM Alginates

But not all alginates are made the same. Depending on the species and processing method, alginates can come in a range of different viscosities and gel strengths/structures - each behaving slightly differently depending on the applications.

At Macro Oceans we’ve pioneered the next generation of alginate processing technology to deliver high-quality alginates with a range of visco-elastic structures. Our zero-waste biorefinery also sets a new standard for sustainable manufacturing.

Today we’re proud to announce a unique offering - MacroForm^TM Alginates - which reflects our enduring commitment to high-performance ingredients without compromising on sustainability.

Our Go-to-Market Partnership

Back to the icing on the donut. Having a great alginate is not enough. To create a truly great icing you need deep knowledge of alginate and deep expertise in making food textures.

Today we’re thrilled to announce an exciting new strategic partnership with Socius Ingredients to bring sustainable alginates to US food manufacturers. Macro Oceans’ deep expertise in sustainable alginate production combined with Socius Ingredients’ track-record in delivering high-performance solutions to food customers is the perfect combination of breakthrough science and real-world food texture solutions.

So, if you are a food manufacturer looking to build clean-label textures, derisk your supply chain, and maintain healthy margins, then we’d love to hear from you. And if you’re just alginate curious, then please reach out!

In reality, formulators are forced to choose: use a synthetic ingredient like a carbomer (often not on clean lists because of concerns over microplastic or impurities) to get the mineral particles to evenly disperse or use a natural ingredient like a gum or bentonite that causes nozzle clogging or white casting. Turns out, it’s pretty difficult. Until today.

Super suspensions, no microplastics, no impurities of concern

Your friends at Macro Oceans have solved this problem. Meet Big Kelp Flex, a 100% natural superabsorbent natural polymer made from pure seaweed cellulose. This breakthrough ingredient is capable of suspending high density particles like SPF grade zinc or titanium even at very low viscosities. Don’t believe us? Check this out:

That’s a super suspension of 0.5% Big Kelp Flex in water with TiO2. Still don’t believe us? Have a look at how beautifully it suspends these 40-200 micron mica particles in a lovely, evenly dispersed spray. You can see how a 0.5% xanthan solution performs in comparison.

One reason we’re so excited about this ingredient is because it delivers synthetic-level performance but is 100% natural.

How it works its magic

If this sounds like magic, that’s because seaweed has some magical properties. In any plant, cellulose fibers provide the backbone structure that gives that organism its shape. In a tree (the source of most cellulose in the market today) those fibers are short and stocky. They connect together in strong building blocks, allowing trees to defy gravity and grow upwards. In contrast, cellulose fibers in seaweed are much longer and more flexible.This allows the seaweed to flex rhythmically in its natural environment, resisting strong tides, currents and waves.

This structural difference is reflected at the molecular level.

This intriguing insight fueled a decade-long journey of breakthrough R&D and surprises. What we discovered is that these long, thin seaweed fibers can absorb 600x their weight in water creating a unique, smooth visco-gel structure that is thixotropic and shear thinning without losing particle suspension in the bottle or at the nozzle during application. That means that while this superabsorbent polymer may be 100% natural, it delivers performance on par with the best synthetics like carbomers and acrylates.

(Un)Natural performance

From suspensions to textures, Big Kelp Flex is, well, incredibly flexible. You can use it to create a structure strong enough to suspend high density particles like zinc, titanium, mica or color pigments, even in very low-viscosity systems. You can also use it to create a wide range of velvety smooth textures combined with an excellent quick-break skin feel without the tackiness commonly associated with xanthan gum and other natural rheology modifiers.

There are so many different things it can do, we decided to chart them out:

So whether you need a low viscosity suspension, a velvety smooth texture or a stable emulsion, Big Kelp Flex has your formula’s back.

The best hangtime, every time

We started Macro Oceans because we’re optimists: we’re building a big kelp economy for a low carbon future. And the beauty industry is full of optimists: you’re creators making amazing products that consumers love.

Big Kelp Flex is where our optimism combines: together we can build amazing products that consumers adore and a more sustainable economy for all. For more information, please reach out (hello@macro-oceans.com). We’d love to hear about what you’re going to build.

Request more info

Remember when we talked about our zero-waste vision? Well, we're watching it sprout into reality! Our amazing partner OceanMade has created kelp pots — biodegradable seed starter pots using the seaweed pulp leftover from our Big Kelp Hydration production. These sustainable pots are replacing traditional peat-based options, giving gardeners a truly ocean-friendly way to start their seedlings. Talk about closing the loop!

🧪 Big Kelp Hydration is heating up

One of the common questions we get about Big Kelp Hydration is how it holds up at high temperatures. Good news! Our latest studies show it retains stability at 80°C for up to 4 hours. This means you can now confidently use it in hot processes like emulsification and still maintain all those powerful hydration benefits. We've updated our formulation guidelines to reflect this expanded temperature range.

🤝 Growing Our Distribution Network

We're thrilled to announce two new partnerships that will make accessing our ingredients easier than ever:

• Catalyst Technologies, serving customers on the West Coast

• Black Label Ingredients, serving customers on the East Coast

These respected ingredient suppliers share our commitment to sustainability and innovation, and we couldn't be more excited to work with them!

📅 Join Us: MakeUp LA

Mark your calendars: on Feb 12 in ☀️ Los Angeles, CA ☀️ our CEO Matthew Perkins will be speaking on Blue Beauty at MakeUp LA. If you’re in town and want to meet up, let us know!

• Big Kelp Hydration - our powerhouse bioactive ingredient - landed some new clinical results showing an 80% improvement in immediate hydration

• Unpacking our farm-to-formula story to provide the beauty industry with unparalleled transparency into our zero waste supply chain

• Joining forces with Everything Seaweed to expand and scale our technology platform

• Winning a $1.4m grant from the Department of Energy to convert kelp into ethanol

But most rewarding is connecting the incredible brand founders and beauty formulation artists in the beauty space with the regenerative kelp farming community in Alaska. We are continuously inspired by all the amazing ways you are bringing kelp’s natural superpowers to consumers. We can’t wait to see your creations on the shelf!

Our mission at Macro Oceans is to build a Big Kelp Economy for a low-carbon future. There is so much more to do and build. But for now, we’re going to thank you for coming along for the ride and look forward to catching up in 2025!

Matthew on behalf of the whole Macro Oceans team

From the beginning, Macro Oceans has been focused building a new, regenerative economy based on kelp. In Colin and Jessica, we’ve found kindred spirits for this journey and are so excited to add them to the team.

In addition, we’re proud to announce an addition $2.5 million in seed funding led by Refactor Capital, with participation from McKinley Alaska Private Investment, Knollwood Investment Advisory and Schox Venture Capital.

Together, our combined team will use this funding to expand capacity to meet demand of our our flagship product, Big Kelp Hydration, as well as extend our product offerings into new areas in beauty and beyond. We’re excited for what the future holds!

Can you believe it’s almost Halloween? It’s scary how fast this year has gone.

Upcoming events

Macro Oceans is proud to be partnering with the Canadian Cosmetic Cluster on two upcoming webinars: Introduction to the Blue Economy and Formulating with Macro Oceans.

Introduction to the Blue Economy will introduce you to the blue economy and how it’s changing the beauty industry. You can register for it here.

Formulating with Macro Oceans will cover how to formulate with our Big Kelp Hydration ingredient in skincare and beyond. This webinar is perfect for the aspiring brand builder. You can register for it here.

Macro Oceans in the news

Our CEO Matthew Perkins spoke at the inaugural FLSCC sustainability seminar about our approach to creating sustainable products.

Beauty Matter covered our efforts to bring transparency to the kelp ecosystem. Building a regenerative kelp economy is one of the core motivations for why we do what we do at Macro Oceans and we’re excited to see this resonate with the beauty industry.

Personal Care Global Magazine covered how Kelp is redefining eco-friendly skincare. We appreciated this chance to explore more deeply how and why kelp helps skin.

That’s all for now. As always, if you have a a beauty project or just want to chat all things kelp, please reach out.

James

Big time results call for big time change. We just completed a clinical trial that proved what we already knew to be true: our ingredient packs a powerful punch, delivering huge hydration without the carbon. So we’re taking a page out of our own book and glowing up — Hydrating Marine Polysaccharides is now Big Kelp Hydration. 

Big Kelp Hydration is still the same ingredient you know and love, but now with even more street cred. In our most recent in-vivo clinical trial, we tested it against a placebo and found that it hydrated skin 80% better. But Big Kelp Hydration isn’t just a moisturizing hero: the study also showed immediate improvement in skin barrier protection and skin luminosity. These numbers build upon our past research, where we first saw positive clinical results, and helped us get re-inspired about our core mission. 

Request a copy of the full clinicals

Big Kelp Energy

We founded Macro Oceans to build a kelp economy for a low carbon future. Now, we’re making our message even bigger — Big Kelp Energy. Big Kelp Energy is about doing big things with kelp: combining best-in-class performance, with real sustainability, and inviting you, our partners, along for the ride.   

To say we’re obsessed with having a positive impact on the beauty industry would be an understatement: as it is now, the planet’s supply chain isn’t working, and the threat of the climate crisis demands that we think differently. Big Kelp Energy is helping us do just that: reimagining the future as one not defined by crisis, but by resilience and innovation.   

The farmer behind the formula

Meet Alf Pryor and Lexa Meyer, of Alaska Ocean Farms. Macro Oceans is proud to put the names of the farms we work with on the bottles of our high performance product.

This level of traceability is one of the things that makes Macro Oceans unique — just this month, Beauty Matter and Cosmetics Design ran a story about the level of transparency our product brings — but we think it’s the right thing to do. Consumers and beauty companies should know where the products they’re purchasing come from; to us it seems obvious.

We sat down to talk with them about how our seaweed is farmed and what the life of a seaweed farmer is like. Take a look and learn about two of the farmers behind the formula!

We can’t believe it’s already summer. Kelp harvest has already started in most places and is already done in a couple. Here’s a quick run through of what we’ve been up to.

Photo credit: Alaska Ocean Farms

In the news

Matthew, our CEO, was featured recently on the Green Beauty Conversations podcast with Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier. They talked about green beauty, sustainability, and why we think seaweed and cosmetics go great together. It’s worth a listen!

Vogue Beauty recently did a report on Blue Beauty: What’s ‘blue beauty’ and why is it trending? (behind a paywall here, pdf available here). It’s a great introduction to the topic and how brands are struggling to meet consumer expectations. We were proud to be the only active ingredient supplier mentioned in it — and one of the ones helping brands to meet consumer expectations.

Last but not least, Cosmoprof discussed how circularity and sustainability can help cosmetic companies reduce their climate impact. The amount of energy around this topic is really exciting; we’re trying to help brands tell a circular story that includes both packaging and ingredients.

Customer spotlight

We are grateful to Dr. Eliana McKee of Eira Beauty for sitting down with us to talk about her journey as a brand founder and Alaska based cosmetic brand. 

We talked about her founding story, how to combine efficacy with sustainability, and what it’s like to start a cosmetic brand in Alaska. You can check out the full video here.

Her body lotion, featuring our bioactive ingredient, is a favorite around the Macro Oceans office. Do check it out!

On the farm

Photo Credit: Adam Vera

Adam from our team joined Greenwave and several farmers in Kodiak, Alaska to talk about seaweed stabilization. As any beachgoer knows, seaweed begins degrading quickly when taken out of the water. The current state of the art requires drying or freezing, which is expensive and energy intensive. This summer we’re running our largest trial yet of a novel stabilization method that would allow us to skip this step entirely.

Upcoming events

We’ll be attending the Florida Society of Cosmetic Chemists’ Inaugural Sustainability Symposium. You should come join us. If you’re planning to attend, send us a note and we’ll meet up.

That’s all for now. As always, if you have an upcoming cosmetic project!

James

The first consideration is your use case: what are you trying to use your kelp for? Having a hypothesis helps narrow down the set of relevant tests and can save you a lot of time, effort, and money.

For example, if you’re making a food product, you’ll be more interested in the nutritional and safety aspects of the seaweed. If you’re making a cosmetic or nutraceutical product, the bioactive properties will be more important to you. 

But no matter what you’re trying to make, it helps to have a general understanding of seaweed composition.

Making Algae Testing Super Simple

When we started Macro Oceans, one of the challenges we faced was getting high quality, cost-effective, and rapid analysis of our seaweed. If you are facing the same problem, we’ve got your covered!

We partnered with Cultured Supply to set up a one-stop-shop for product developers, farmers, and cultivators to assess the quality of their algae. There are packages for product safety, nutrition, and bioactivity that we run together with lab partners Celignis and Eurofins. 

To find out more visit: https://algae.culturedsupply.com/testing 

Find out more

The Basics (from a food perspective)

Like land-based crops, seaweed has five major components:

• Moisture: literally the amount of water inside the seaweed

• Fats: lipids, fatty acids, etc

• Proteins: made up of amino acids, the building blocks of life

• Carbohydrates: commonly called sugars

• Ash: a fancy catch all for minerals and metals 

Obviously there’s a lot of variation between species as well as across locations, growing environments and years for any given species. But if we keep things simple and zoom in on Alaska sugar kelp, this is roughly what you get: 

Let’s look at each component in turn.

Moisture

The most important thing to know is that the moisture content in seaweed is high, ranging from ~60% in red seaweeds to 85-90% in brown seaweeds. This means that if you have 1kg of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima), then you have ~100g of materials to work with, 900g of water. Yep, it’s a lot of water.

The high moisture content has a range of implications. First, as soon as you harvest your seaweed, you have to quickly do something with it because with that much water it will spoil within just a few days. In that sense, it’s not so different from fish or other fresh produce. That’s why people immediately dry, freeze, ferment or stabilize their crop after harvest.

When thinking about composition and what you have to work with, we always talk numbers on a dry weight basis. For example, when we say protein is 10%, we mean it’s 10% of the dry seaweed. Why do we do this? Because the moisture content is a large fraction of the total and it can vary significantly from sample to sample, thus not controlling for moisture can distort measurements significantly.

From here on out, all the numbers are on a dry weight basis … 

Fats & Proteins

In general, kelps are skinny, protein deficient plants. Fat content in most brown seaweed is around ~5-7% and protein is not much higher at 8-10%. Of course, there’s some variation by year, geography and species. But overall, it’s best to think of seaweed as a carbohydrate crop. 

Having said that, seaweed proteins are intriguing. A meta review of recent studies shows that they have high proportions of all 9 essential amino acids. And dulse (Palmaria palmata) even has a comparable protein profile to an egg! 

But remember, if your seaweed has 10% protein on a dry basis then in 1 kg of wet seaweed there’s just 10g of theoretically recoverable protein … So, if you want to sell 10x 55 lb bags of protein powder … you get the idea! 

Carbohydrates

There are two main types of carbohydrates in brown seaweeds: polysaccharides and alginates. These are commonly known as complex carbohydrates which are made up of more simple molecules. There are also simple sugars like mannitol which is a sugar alcohol. Let’s look at each type.

• Polysaccharides: brown seaweeds are prized for two specific bioactive polysaccharides - fucoidan and laminarin. Fucoidan is a long-chain sulfated polysaccharide with a complex branching structure. This just means that there is a chain of fucose molecules linked together with sulfate groups hanging off of them! Laminarin, is a type of beta-glucan, essentially a co-polymer made up of glucose and mannose molecules. The bioactivity of these compounds has been studied in a range of applications from gut health to skin care to therapeutics. If you want to find out more about how to harness these amazing bioactive compounds in your skincare or haircare product, drop us a line!

• Alginates: the other major carbohydrate component of brown seaweed are alginates. Alginates are a type of hydrocolloid, sitting alongside their more famous cousins, carrageenan and agar. They are co-polymers made up of specific types of uronic acids joined together in a linear form (e.g. not branching!). Most commonly you find blocks of mannuronic and guluronic acids connected together. The sequence and proportion of the M and G blocks defines the so-called M:G ratio as well as functional properties like viscosity, gel strength, and cross-linking performance. 

One important thing to note: some techniques for measuring these complex carbohydrates are indirect, which means that you don’t measure the complex compound itself, but rather the constituent parts. For example, rather than measuring fucoidan (the polysaccharide) you measure fucose (the monosaccharide). Why do this? Primarily because getting an accurate measurement requires harsher extraction methods which break the complex compounds down into their smallest parts. Once you have your measurement you just need to do a little bit of math to estimate the target compound.

There are many other nuances to carbohydrate measurement in seaweed such as purity, molecular weight, functional performance and more. But I promised to keep it simple so … 

Ash

The final component is ash, the panoply of minerals and metals. Measuring the total number is pretty easy - just heat a sample in a muffle furnace to 500c and see how much “ash” is left over. Essentially you’re burning off all the organic material to reveal the non-organic content. Of course, this doesn’t tell you what minerals or metals are actually in your ash - for that you have to do some fancier measurements like ICP-MS.

Understanding the ash content will tell you what sort of micronutrients might be available in your seaweed -  important if you were making a biostimulant or an animal feed. It will also help you understand your iodine levels and whether you have any heavy metals - both important for food customers.

Oh, and what about everything else?

Beside the main components of seaweed there are literally dozens of other things you can measure, from vitamins to pigments to phlorotannins. All of these require specialized (and relatively expensive) tests. We’ve run a number of these for clients, so reach out if you want to learn more.

We hope you’re having a great February! It’s been an exciting month for us at Macro Oceans.

Come learn more about our journey to market.

I’ll be joining Greenwave, a leading voice in regenerative seaweed, for their event series Sea to Sale to discuss kelp product development. I’ll be discussing our Hydrating Marine Polysaccharides product, how we developed it, and Macro Oceans works to source its seaweed sustainably.

You can sign up to attend the link here.

Customer spotlight: Sea Soaked Skin

Nikol Fiala, CEO and Founder of Sea Soaked Skin was kind enough to sit down with us and talk about her journey as a Clean Beauty Founder, seaweed as a source for natural skin care, clean beauty and more.

If you’ve ever thought about starting a clean beauty brand, her story is worth checking out!

Her Marine Facial Mist, powered by our Hydrating Marine Polysaccharides, is a great example of the power of seaweed in cosmetics. It’s also a perfect last minute Valentine’s day gift!

Upcoming projects

If you’ve got a cosmetic project or clever idea that involves seaweed, send us a note!

Until next time,

James and the Macro Oceans team

While that vision remains a work in progress (and like all big ideas, it will for some time), looking back I think we’ll always remember 2023 as the year we moved out of the lab and into the world. 

In April, we emerged into the world and told our story for the first time. Then we went on to:

• Launch our first product

• Do our first manufacturing runs

• Win our first customers

It hasn’t all been good news, but throughout it all we’ve been inspired by a number of others in the space — more than we could effectively name here — working tirelessly to build a low-carbon seaweed economy. 

As we look ahead to 2024, we’re pumped because we know we’re going to be super-busy:

• Scaling to meet demand

• Expanding our unstoppable team 

• Launching awesome new products to unleash seaweed’s superpowers

How you can help

Do you know someone who works in cosmetics and is interested in effective, natural, sustainable products? Do you have a favorite brand that would be better with some seaweed? Please put us in touch (and know in advance that you have our deep gratitude)!

Matthew on behalf of the Macro Oceans Team

Beauty brands are no exception. They are responding by using natural ingredients from plants that are grown sustainably and finding ways to remove emissions from their production lines. Ten years ago, no one was talking about clean beauty or low carbon. Today, everyone is. 

More than meets the eye

It’s hard to say precisely when and where the clean beauty movement was born. But there’s no doubt that today it’s a powerful force. In 2021, Beautycounter, one of the first companies to come out with a “Never List” of ingredients it would never include, became the industry’s first $1bn clean beauty brand. Sephora, the eponymous beauty retailer, carries more than 80 clean beauty brands. 

Over the past two decades, clean beauty has come to mean:

• Natural: no synthetics, no harmful ingredients, no animal testing

• Performance: the product has to work (preferably clinically proven), easy and cost effective formulations

• Regenerative: locally sourced, good for people and the planet

• Sustainable: zero waste, 100% traceable, low-impact production

In short, clean beauty is about more than just sustainable packaging.

Seaweed, the clean beauty superhero

Seaweed is no stranger to the beauty shelf. Brands like La Mer and Repêchage have been leveraging the hydrating, anti-oxidant, regenerative benefits that come naturally from the complex polysaccharides found in seaweed for a long time.

Our hydrating marine polysaccharide combines the proven performance of seaweed extracts with a low carbon, clean beauty supply chain. All of our seaweed is farmed in pristine, Alaska waters. It is then gently processed in a zero waste system.

Hydrating Marine Polysaccharides provides clinically proven hydration benefits using regenerative Alaska seaweed. Our processing is zero waste and every bottle can be traced to the farmer who grew it.

Learn more

The parts of the seaweed that don’t have bioactive properties are used in food or regenerative products, like seaweed based paper or plastic. Finally, it’s all 100% traceable; every bottle can be traced to the farmer who grew it and the season it was harvested in.

If you’re curious to find out more or request a sample or just want to give us a high five, visit our website or send us an email (hello@macro-oceans.com). We want to hear from you!

We spoke to half a dozen farmers across the state (if we missed you, please reach out!). All the data was self-reported and although we received updates from the same number of farmers as last year, we know of a few farmers who did not respond, so this total is probably a bit lower than reality. The results: total production in 2023 was 389,900 wet lbs, down 30% on last year.

The split of species (alaria vs. saccharina) remained constant at 16% vs 84% of the total. 

After such rapid growth, why is production declining? It’s quite likely that in 2022 farmers were putting exploratory feet in the water, to understand different sites and learn how to grow kelp. However, the dominant factor is likely softer than expected demand for Alaska’s primary format: frozen kelp.

In conversations with farmers, a number told us that they were now mostly growing kelp that had already been contracted but some of the inventory is sitting in cold stores unsold. Unfortunately, freezing is an expensive way to store the crop and makes transportation costly. Kelp is 90% water after all and no one wants to pay to ship water around. 

Alaska currently lacks the infrastructure to produce a dried product locally. Moreover, formats that stabilize seaweed without freezing or drying have yet to get to scale. Due to these market bottlenecks and lack of firm commitments to purchase kelp, growers (correctly) decided to put less seed in the water and thus production is lower this year. 

Of course, lower production is not the news many (including us) want to hear. But 2023 shows there is more work to be done in building demand for kelp-based products in the US market and investing in the infrastructure needed to bring those products to scale.

With this in mind, here is the 101 level of how I understand the Western seaweed industry.2 It is by definition an oversimplification — many organizations play across the categories I’ve created — but I’ve found it helpful as a starting place and hopefully you will as well. If something better exists, please point us to it!

Supply

The first part of the value chain is concerned with supply: how can we produce more seaweed, more efficiently, more sustainably, and more profitably?

Farmers / harvesters: Seaweed starts in the water. Someone is responsible for cultivating it or wild harvesting it. This is where the value chain begins. There is no industry without these people because there is no crop!3

Farm technology providers: While it’s certainly possible to farm seaweed without investing in technology, in practice, no one does this at scale. Seaweed farmers need tools and products to make farming easier: more predictable, more efficient, more sustainable. 

Regulators: Almost all seaweed production happens within a regulatory framework. One of the most common topics from people entering the seaweed industry on the production side is the process of getting approved to begin farming in the first place. It may seem odd to put regulators in this production section, but since most seaweed production must be permitted before it can begin, regulators are absolutely a critical piece of the industry. Creating effective regulations is difficult and the seaweed industry needs thoughtful, talented regulators who can balance different interests (social, environmental and private), ideally finding ways to make regulations effective without being onerous.

Demand

This part of the value chain is concerned with demand: how can we turn seaweed into something that someone, somewhere wants to buy and use?

Processors: More often than not, seaweed is not directly consumed right out of the water; someone does something to it to make it more useful to customers. Sometimes that thing is relatively simple, like freezing or drying it or turning it into a powder. Other times it is more complicated, like stabilizing it and transforming it into chemical components. Sometimes processors are also farmers; sometimes, like in the case of Macro Oceans, they are stand alone organizations devoted to turning seaweed into value added products. We believe processors have a unique role to play in helping scale the industry by making it possible to serve more industries with seaweed based products at lower costs than is possible with current technology.

Distributors / market makers: After the seaweed is processed, it’s common for there to be a distributor of the processed product. Although this isn’t always the case, it’s common for these distributors to view themselves as outside of the seaweed industry and instead aligned with an industry  (e.g., they are a distributor of natural ingredients for food and nutraceuticals, not just a distributor of seaweed ingredients).

Application creators: This is where the magic happens; somebody uses a seaweed based product to make something consumers love. These are the inventors and innovators, often supported by substantial R&D efforts, who create new and exciting products using seaweed. They continuously explore different uses for seaweed and refine existing products to make them more appealing to consumers. Frequently, these creators use seaweed and its natural benefits as a part of the value proposition to consumers and brand themselves as a part of the seaweed industry, but just as often, seaweed just ends up as part of the product without consumers ever knowing because it’s the best product for the job. 

As much as anything else, the growth of the industry depends on these creators to think about how to use seaweed based products to make things people love. If you are one of these people or even think you could be one of these people, hit us up at hello@macro-oceans.com; we’d love to try and help you out if we can. 

Industry catalysts

Both the supply and demand sides of the industry rely on and benefit from government, research and education institutions to do basic research into seaweed and share best practices.

Research: Basic research plays a vital role in understanding what seaweed is useful for and how to most effectively produce it. Many of the players in the supply and demand side of the seaweed industry work directly with educational institutions to understand how to operate or indirectly with those institutions via their published papers.

Government: In addition to their role as regulators, many governments have sought to help spur industry development through funding basic research and private seaweed initiatives on both the supply and demand sides of the industry. The industry and the public benefits from this by pulling forward investments that are too risky for private investors to make.

Educational institutions: Educational institutions and non profits help educate players in the industry about the latest developments in research and best practices. Perhaps most importantly, these institutions also help educate consumers about the benefits of seaweed as a crop, creating market demand for the industry.

Thanks to Peter Green and Fed DeGobbi for reviewing early drafts of this post and providing feedback on it.