Group Lead, Ved Krishna
In this episode of the Good Garbage Podcast, host Ved Krishna sits down with Neha Jain, Founder & CEO of Zerocircle, to explore how seaweed-based materials could transform the future of sustainable packaging.
From Google to Seaweed: Neha's Journey
Neha Jain shares the unlikely path that took her from working at Google to founding Zerocircle — a company building natural polymer packaging materials from seaweed.
Why Seaweed? Properties and Potential
Seaweed grows without freshwater, fertilizer, or land — Neha explains why it is one of the most promising raw materials for home-compostable packaging alternatives to plastic.
The Science of Natural Polymers
Zerocircle extracts and processes natural polymers from seaweed to create packaging films that dissolve safely in nature, avoiding the persistent pollution associated with conventional plastics.
Scaling Challenges for Sustainable Materials
Moving from lab to commercial scale requires solving complex problems in supply chain, material consistency, and cost parity — Neha outlines the real hurdles that climate-tech startups face.
Why Sustainability Must Work Commercially
A sustainability solution that doesn’t make business sense will never scale — Neha explains how Zerocircle is building commercial viability into its model from the start.
Collaboration in the Seaweed Ecosystem
No single company can transform packaging alone — Neha discusses the partnerships across growers, processors, brands, and policymakers essential for seaweed-based materials to reach mainstream adoption.
The Future of Sustainable Packaging
Neha shares her vision for a world where packaging dissolves back into nature, and what it will take — in terms of technology, investment, and systemic change — to get there.
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