Franziska Elmer, Scientific Project Manager at Seafields, said on Thursday night that much more can be done with the Sargassum seaweed that has inundated the region’s beaches.
“Unfortunately, most of the Sargassum that we collect is put in a landfill to rot away and while we have found many uses for it, it’s still in a starting phase of actually building businesses around those uses. Even though Sargassum is still a big nuisance, we can turn it into an opportunity and into a blue economy for the Caribbean,” said Elmer.
She was one of the presenters at a virtual forum hosted by Climate Tracker, entitled Blue Resilience – The Approaches to the Sargassum Crisis in the Caribbean.
She highlighted the work being done in Barbados, specifically Rum and Sargassum’s plans to produce biofuel from Sargassum seaweed and rum industry wastewater.
