Firm pitches sargassum as ”blue gold”

A Trinidad-based en­vi­ron­men­tal in­no­va­tion group is of­fer­ing its ex­per­tise to Gov­ern­ment as it moves to tack­le the an­nu­al sar­gas­sum in­va­sion, say­ing the sea­weed can be con­vert­ed in­to fer­tilis­er and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts to strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty.

In a me­dia re­lease on Fri­day, Syn­er­gy­Sphere­CASA (SS­Casa) wel­comed the sar­gas­sum-to-wealth ini­tia­tive an­nounced by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment's ac­qui­si­tion of spe­cialised beach-clear­ing trac­tors with sup­port from the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and the Gov­ern­ment of Japan.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said while the new equip­ment ad­dress­es the chal­lenge of col­lect­ing sar­gas­sum from beach­es, it is propos­ing a pro­cess­ing sys­tem to con­vert the har­vest­ed bio­mass in­to com­mer­cial prod­ucts.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Sam Wil­son said Gov­ern­ment's in­vest­ment in col­lec­tion equip­ment cre­ates an op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish a lo­cal pro­cess­ing in­dus­try.

"The Min­istry and its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners have suc­cess­ful­ly built the bridge from beach to base­line. With the heavy col­lec­tion equip­ment now ac­tive, our 'Blue Gold' frame­work of­fers a ready-made pro­cess­ing ecosys­tem. We do not need to rein­vent the wheel. We can im­me­di­ate­ly ab­sorb this raw bio­mass and con­vert it in­to high-val­ue or­gan­ic fer­til­iz­ers and rapid-com­post al­ter­na­tives that pro­tect our agri­cul­tur­al fu­ture."

The pro­pos­al fol­lows a pre­sen­ta­tion made by the or­gan­i­sa­tion to the CARI­COM Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force in Jan­u­ary. SS­Casa said its strat­e­gy aligns with CARI­COM's "25 by 2025 + 5" ini­tia­tive, which seeks to re­duce the re­gion's de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food by ex­pand­ing lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

The group's frame­work cen­tres on three ar­eas: har­vest­ing sar­gas­sum be­fore it reach­es shore, pro­cess­ing it in­to fer­tilis­ers and soil con­di­tion­ers, and sup­port­ing cli­mate-re­silient agri­cul­ture through mod­u­lar farm­ing sys­tems.

SS­Casa said its mod­el has al­ready been in­tro­duced in Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and To­ba­go, with plans to ex­pand to St Lu­cia, and is now seek­ing to im­ple­ment the ap­proach more ex­ten­sive­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it wants to work along­side the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and the Na­tion­al Sar­gas­sum Task Force to de­vel­op lo­cal pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment and gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in coastal com­mu­ni­ties.

It al­so said in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships could sup­port the in­tro­duc­tion of tech­nolo­gies for pro­duc­ing bio­plas­tics and ac­cel­er­at­ing com­post pro­duc­tion from sar­gas­sum.

Syn­er­gy­Sphere­CASA de­scribes it­self as a re­gion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal in­no­va­tion group fo­cused on cir­cu­lar econ­o­my projects, cli­mate re­silience and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment across the Caribbean.