Everyday Uses for Seaweed

If you've come across The Shropshire Seaweed Company before, you probably know all about using seaweed as a fertilizer or as an organic compost maker. While this traditional use of seaweed extract is well known, there are new applications for these amazing plants being developed all the time, many of them here in the UK.

You may have read, for example, about the ongoing exploration of seaweed as a biofuel, to help power cars and planes, or of how doctors recently used seaweed to help save a mother who had complications during childbirth. Whilst the widespread application of these pioneering technologies may be some way off - they still have more than a hint of Tomorrow's World about them - there are many seaweed products already on the market, with benefits for you and your family in the here and now.

For example, seaweed now offers a safer alternative for anyone has ever struggled with Oven Pride or any another chemical oven cleaner. The discovery of 'surfactants' - a sort of organic detergent - within the Laminaria Digitata seaweed has redefined what can be achieved using a natural oven cleaner - with performance far beyond the old citrus based options. Developed by Sea-Chem, the Sea Clean Eco Friendly Oven Cleaner was initially developed as an industrial strength degreasing product and as such is now being used widely by professional cleaning franchises as a totally safe oven cleaner - one that can be taken into customers' homes without any health and safety worries.

Seaweed's high nutritional value also makes it incredibly effective during the water purification process. In effect, it's a sort of Red Bull for the bacteria that break effluent and waste down, heightening their activity and allowing them to multiply rapidly. For this reason, seaweed's use in municipal wastewater treatment facilities is growing, but there are domestic applications as well. Over a million UK households are fitted with stand-alone septic tanks. If this is you, you'll know that septic tank problems can cause a significant degree of anxiety. Here, seaweed is providing part of the solution, combining with augmented bacteria to assist in septic tank shock treatment and septic tank maintenance.

Indeed, seaweed's ability to fuel the activity of micro-organisms has led to its wider application in the bioremediation of contaminated soil, such as is found at old gasworks, petrol stations and industrial units. Again, these developments are not without domestic applications, with products such as our own oil stain remover for driveways, drawing on much the same principles. Meanwhile, the use of seaweed in cosmetics and nutrition continues to gather pace here in the UK. You may have read, for example, that in November 2012 the first licence to harvest seaweed for food purposes was awarded in Cornwall.

As a sustainable and green resource, with a unique biology, seaweed will come to play more and more of a role in our everyday lives over the coming years. Hopefully this blog will have opened your eyes to what is already out there.

David Ross, Business Development