Tidal Vision

Tidal Vision turns crab shells into chitosan, a non-toxic biodegradable biopolymer, through a closed-loop process that produces no waste. Chitosan replaces a long list of synthetic and often toxic chemicals: silver nanoparticles, triclosan, polyacrylamides, synthetic pesticides. It usually does the job at a lower price.

The reason it hasn't displaced more of them is production. Conventional chitosan manufacturing is expensive and generates toxic waste streams of its own, which is a poor way to make a green chemical, and it happens on the other side of the world. Chitosan is consumed as a solution that is almost entirely water, so shipping it means paying freight on water, which is why the economics never worked from overseas. Making it here, from a seafood waste stream that is a disposal problem for someone else, resolves the freight and the feedstock in one move.