Miami Offering Grants for Seaweed Recycling Ideas

The Florida coast has been plagued by seaweed this year as the brown, smelly, mushy stuff keeps washing up from the ocean. Now, Miami is rewarding innovations that help deal with the issue.

Miami-Dade beaches have been littered with seaweed this year, but fortunately it seems to have subsided for now, however, the seaweed will be back. To prevent the beaches from being full of the brown mass again, the city is looking to hand out grants for ideas on how to recycle the nuisance.

The Miami-Dade Innovation Authority (MDIA) is a non-profit that connects local government to private technology companies. MDIA is prepared to pay $100,000 to three startups that can come up with environmentally friendly ways to get rid of the annual seaweed issue.

“We’re looking for these really great entrepreneurs and innovators that are not only focused on the circular economy but saying, how can we create value out of something that would otherwise be disposed of,” said Leigh-Ann Buchanan, president and chief executive officer of MDIA.

“Miami wins when startups grow and start their business here.”

Currently, the washed-up seaweed is picked up on beaches by heavy equipment and trucked to a Miami-Dade facility to dry and shrink before going to the landfill. Cleaning the quite expensive for the area, as it cost $4.2 million in 2022 alone to clean the mass.

“The [project’s] primary purpose is ecological,” Levine Cava told the Miami Herald. “Not filling up the landfills with a product that ideally doesn’t need to go in the landfill. It’s not garbage. It’s not waste. It’s organic, and we hope there will be other uses for it.”

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