What makes Mike Van Drunen a Global Shaker?
Mike Van Drunen co-founded Algix LLC in 2010 with the vision to use algae as a natural resource to make bioplastics for consumer products.
Algix has grown into the world’s leading producer of algae bioproducts. The company also helps sustainability-focused brands source innovative materials to help them achieve their goals and bring new eco-conscious products to market.
In 2015, Algix joined forces with Effekt LLC, an environmentally minded product and material development company to set up Bloom Holdings LLC to commercialize the worlds first algae-derived flexible foam.
The company’s focused on “helping the fast-changing footwear industry meet its sustainability goals.” Their tagline is “turning green water into clean water,” because algae’s uncontrollable rise in growth is harming plant, animal, and human life and greatly impacting aquaculture industries — so by removing it and harnessing its power, Drunen says Bloom is “turning a negative into a positive.”
“Algal blooms have become prevalent worldwide due to a rise in global temperatures and a subsequent increase in water temperatures. They’ve also been impacted by increased human population growth and from activities like overfishing, which have increased nutrient loading in waterways. As a feedstock, algae biomass is a non-food resource, requiring no pesticides to grow and is found in abundance globally. This ensures a consistent and stable raw material supply for years to come,” says Bloom.
The foam is produced in a patented process that utilizes Algix’s dried algae biomass (GMO-free) which is solely collected from waste streams across the US and Asia.
BLOOM™ foam’s ideal applications include footwear, yoga mats, sporting goods, and toys just to name a few.
It has been used by fashion brands Ecoalf, H&M and Loaf and turned into all manner of shoes and more recently, surfboards.
The company confirms that the direct environmental impact of every pair of shoes made using BLOOM Algae Foam is: 225 bottles of cleaned/filtered water returned to the environment and 21 ballons of C02 kept from entering the atmosphere.
“Bloom Holdings has a strong commitment to being a values-driven organization. We try to incorporate sustainability and practicality into everything we do. We want to help make more sustainable product options an accessible and easy choice,” says Mike Van Drunen
Tags: algae, biomaterials, sustainability, sustainable, sustainable fashionLast updated: October 23, 2019
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