Accademia La Maison de la Danse Srld Italy

AlgiKnit extracts alginate from kelp by adding certain salts to the seaweed base. After the so-called “salt bath” pulls

the alginate from the kelp’s cell walls, the biopolymer is extracted from the seaweed residue, dried into a powder and fused

into a yarn that can be turned into a variety of stretch

fabric types. “The process is similar to that of synthetic materials, where one long continuous strand is produced,”

says Tessa Callaghan, the co-founder of AlgiKnit. “The filament can be plied and twisted to increase strength, or cut into

short fibers for other purposes.” AlgiKnit won National Geographic’s Chasing Genius Competition for developing this

technology.