Episode 10: Scaling up Sargassum based products with Jason Cole and Jorge Vega Matos from C- Combinator

In this episode we talk to Jason Cole and Jorge Vega Matos, who are part of the 20-person strong team at C-Combinator, a public benefit corporation creating valuable circular economies based on Sargassum that can address regenerative agriculture, sustainable manufacturing, and scalable carbon sequestration. Jason Cole is the Executive VP for Innovation and Jorge Vega Matos is VP for Marketing & Communications. To them, Sargassum is a sign of disrupted ocean ecosystems. As Sargassum is thriving with this new climate, they plan to work with the ocean to avert climate collapse.

Listen to the episode to hear about:

- Sargassum beaching events in Tanzania (10:00)

- Mission of C-Combinator to help restore the oceans and climate through the growth of naturally occurring seaweeds (11:15)

- C-Combinator is opening the first high tech biorefinery for macroalgae in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico and Mexico) (11:45)

- Their plans to innovate with sargassum and scale a large range of products in a sustainable way (12:25)

- As a public benefit cooperation they are about economy justice for island and coastal economies (13:30)

- Biggest hurdle to close shore seaweed farming is regulatory, to get the permission to put lines in the water (16:00)

- Deepsea seaweed farming has large potential in the future but need to still be scaled up(19:00)

- Jason journey from IT to C- Combinator (23:00)

- Jorge background commercial anthropologist and foresight researcher (29:00)

- Seaweeds are one of the groups of obscure organisms with amazing properties that we are rediscovering (29:30)

- Helping local communities through job creation and mitigation of negative effects of Sargassum (32:45)

- Cultural value of beaches and the ocean (35:45)

- Multitude of partners at Universities, Government and elsewhere (36:20)

- Producing biostimulant from Sargassum (38:10, 41:45)

- Other products they developed such as super absorbants for agriculture, replacements for leather, foam (40:45,( 47:25)

- The vision of C- Combinator as the anti-oil company(43:30)

- Do we need to farm Sargassum to make all these products ?(52:15)

- Using Sargassum for climate mitigation (56:30, 1:02:32)

- How to remove arsenic and other contaminants from harvested Sargassum in the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (59:00)

Learn more about C-Combinator:
֍ C- combinator website

֍ LinkedIn

֍ Twitter

֍ Climate foundation website

֍ Movie: 2040 Join the Regeneration

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