Sway Polybag
Meet the Sway Polybag
A next-generation alternative to traditional LDPE plastic.
✓ Translucent, durable & lightweight
Stock Sway Polybags
Custom Sway Polybags
The first scalable polybag made with a planet-replenishing resource: seaweed
Sway Polybags are strong, protective, and lightweight. While this bag matches the necessary performance of traditional LDPE plastic polybags, it’s made with a regenerative resource and designed to decompose after use.
With seaweed as its star ingredient, every Sway Polybag helps reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and support healthy ecosystems and communities. Seaweed is an abundant, fast-growing crop that can improve ocean health, boost biodiversity, and support thriving coastal livelihoods.
Use Cases
The Sway Polybag is designed to protect dry goods from dust, scuffing, and weather during transit. It’s well-suited for products across:
✓ Fashion and apparel
✓ Sports and outdoors
✓ Personal care and cosmetics
✓ Home goods and accessories
✓ Tech and electronics
The Technology
Seaweed is abundant in natural polymers, which provide its flexible, plastic-like quality. Sway utilizes these natural polymers from responsibly sourced seaweed to create a Certified 100% Biobased pellet technology.
These pellets—called TPSea™, or Thermoplastic Seaweed Resin—are blended with other compostable polymers to create a myriad of materials, including flexible films. The resulting material is over 50% TPSea!
Sway Polybags are the first TPSea-based innovation, demonstrating the potential for retail packaging to be both functional and regenerative.
Stock Sway Polybags
Custom Sway Polybags
Design a customized bag starting at 5,000 units.
The first scalable polybag made with a planet-replenishing resource: seaweed
Sway Polybags are strong, protective, and lightweight. While this bag matches the necessary performance of traditional LDPE plastic polybags, it’s made with a regenerative resource and designed to decompose after use.
With seaweed as its star ingredient, every Sway Polybag helps reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and support healthy ecosystems and communities. Seaweed is an abundant, fast-growing crop that can improve ocean health, boost biodiversity, and support thriving coastal livelihoods.
Use Cases
The Sway Polybag is designed to protect dry goods from dust, scuffing, and weather during transit. It’s well-suited for products across:
✓ Fashion and apparel
✓ Sports and outdoors
✓ Personal care and cosmetics
✓ Home goods and accessories
✓ Tech and electronics
The Technology
Seaweed is abundant in natural polymers, which provide its flexible, plastic-like quality. Sway utilizes these natural polymers from responsibly sourced seaweed to create a Certified 100% Biobased pellet technology.
These pellets—called TPSea™, or Thermoplastic Seaweed Resin—are blended with other compostable polymers to create a myriad of materials, including flexible films. The resulting material is over 50% TPSea!
Sway Polybags are the first TPSea-based innovation, demonstrating the potential for retail packaging to be both functional and regenerative.
Used By
We invite you to join the coalition of forward-thinking product brands investing in novel materials that can replenish the planet!
“With sustainable initiatives being an important part of the Florence brand, we are thrilled at the fact that companies like Sway are working on alternatives to single use plastic films. Their innovations in seaweed based films are on the forefront of sustainable solutions, and we see the technology as the future of packaging as a whole. Florence has gone to market with Sway's initial trials of their seaweed based materials with great success, and we couldn't be more excited to be a part of a larger movement in the world of regenerative materials.”
Bruce Moore, Director of Innovation
“Sway packaging is a gamechanger. Sway Polybags are meeting performance expectations, they enhance our customer’s experience, and have an amazing impact story. Sway’s holistic approach to sourcing seaweed – working with coastal communities and supporting regenerative ocean farming – mirrors Faherty’s own commitment to building meaningful industry relationships. This partnership goes beyond just packaging; it's about supporting an entire ecosystem of positive change."
Lisa Diegel, Director of Global Sustainability
“Packaging always presented a huge problem for us in our journey to rid plastic from our supply chain. It's always felt like our hands were tied and there were no real solutions / viable partners on the market. It wasn't until meeting and working with the Sway Team that we saw a light at the end of the tunnel and a real potential to change the packaging industry for good.”
Aaron Smith, Chief Operating Officer
“We deeply admire Sway for reimagining sustainable packaging with nature-driven, circular innovation. With a long-standing commitment to responsible materials and practices, we're excited to be piloting the Sway Polybag in our warehouse operations and are hopeful Sway will push the packaging industry forward with their bold solutions and vision for a more regenerative future.”
Ellen Johnson, Sustainability & Innovation Program Leader
Sway Polybag Specifications
Sway Polybag Specifications
Seaweed as a Packaging Input: Why It Matters
Responsibly grown seaweed is an emerging packaging input with big social and ecological benefits. Most biobased packaging inputs (including many conventionally grown land-based crops) degrade soils, threaten biodiversity, require high volumes of fresh water, cause pollution via nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, or rely heavily on fossil fuels for production.
Seaweed cultivation requires no land, fresh water, or fertilizers to grow, while actively improving ocean health, biodiversity, and coastal community livelihoods. Seaweed can create habitat, absorb excess nutrients, and balance ocean acidification. New science even suggests seaweed farming can sequester substantial amounts of carbon!
Seaweed holds incredible promise as a material feedstock, and Sway is paving the path towards making this material widely available long-term. The Sway Polybag is an early step in achieving this vision!
Seaweed as a Packaging Input: Why It Matters
Responsibly grown seaweed is an emerging packaging input with big social and ecological benefits. Most biobased packaging inputs (including many conventionally grown land-based crops) degrade soils, threaten biodiversity, require high volumes of fresh water, cause pollution via nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, or rely heavily on fossil fuels for production.
Seaweed cultivation requires no land, fresh water, or fertilizers to grow, while actively improving ocean health, biodiversity, and coastal community livelihoods. Seaweed can create habitat, absorb excess nutrients, and balance ocean acidification. New science even suggests seaweed farming can sequester substantial amounts of carbon!
Seaweed holds incredible promise as a material feedstock, and Sway is paving the path towards making this material widely available long-term. The Sway Polybag is an early step in achieving this vision!
EcoEnclose is thrilled to partner with Sway, a biomaterial innovation company dedicated to moving beyond sustainability towards regeneration.
Sway seeks to extend the ocean's inherent generosity by pairing seaweed's benevolent qualities with advanced materials science. They are designing next-generation replacements for plastic that replenish seas, soils, and coastal communities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the seaweed come from?
Sway has trusted sourcing partners worldwide, including in Chile, Indonesia, Maine, France, Puerto Rico, and many more.
What kind of seaweed does Sway use?
Responsibly cultivated macroalgae and extracts. Sway prioritizes diversification in their sourcing to avoid over-reliance on any region or species, and support the positive impacts of expanded seaweed cultivation around the globe.
I love the material but don’t need poly bags. Can I use Sway’s film for other applications?
EcoEnclose’s current priority is to utilize Sway’s groundbreaking technology to replace LDPE film in poly bags and retail bags. If you are interested in applications outside of an LDPE bag replacement, contact the Sway team.
How do I track my order?
Your email receipt includes a tracking link from our shipping provider. If you are unable to locate your receipt, please contact our support team for assistance.
What is the shelf life?
Based on our experience to date, these bags have a shelf life of 18 months when stored in cool, dry conditions. With continued shelf-life testing, we will soon have more rigorous testing on this question.
Is it edible?
Nope! Don’t eat the bags.
Can it package food?
Not yet. The material ingredients are food contact safe, but the Sway Polybag itself is awaiting compliance confirmation to ensure food stays fresh inside.
Is it moisture-resistant?
Moisture-resistant—yes; waterproof—no. Sway Polybags can withstand some moisture (think humidity and exposure to rain in transit), but they are not waterproof or suited to package moist/perishable items.
What is it made from?
The material of this bag (TPSea Flex™) is made by combining TPSea™ (aka Thermoplastic Seaweed – Sway's core technology, a 100% biobased pellet made primarily from seaweed) with a certified home compostable, non-renewable polymer.
Is it 100% biobased?
This material is over 50% biobased, and actively increasing!
What is the side seam seal strength of this bag?
We are incredibly excited about Sway Seaweed Polybags. Please note that some of our 12.25" x 18.25" bags have side seams with a seal strength of 10–12 Newtons, slightly lower than the other bag sizes.
We’re confident our 12.25" x 18.25" bags will perform successfully when carefully packed. Rest assured that future production runs of our 12.25" x 18.25" bags will have stronger seam strength.
As always, we stand behind our products, and we are confident that all of our Sway Polybag sizes will meet your needs. If you experience any issues with the performance of any of our Sway Polybags, please reach out — we’ll make it right.
Thanks for being part of this innovation journey with us. Your partnership helps push regenerative packaging forward.
Why seaweed?
Seaweed is a regenerative marine crop that contains natural polymers, the building blocks of Sway’s material portfolio. Compared to common renewable packaging inputs like corn, potato, or sugarcane, the benefits of seaweed truly go above and beyond!
Unlike terrestrial crops farmed through conventional agriculture systems, seaweed thrives off sunlight and seawater, requiring low to no inputs. It’s abundant, fast-growing, space-efficient, and available on nearly every coastline. Seaweed can also generate a lot of good as it grows: increasing habitat for marine life, boosting biodiversity, and mitigating climate change impacts like ocean acidification and erosion. Plus, new science suggests that seaweed can sequester substantial amounts of carbon.
How does Sway ensure sustainable seaweed sourcing?
Sway is committed to supporting the growth of a responsible seaweed industry with transparent, ethical, and sustainable sourcing. It engages in a rigorous onboarding process to vet seaweed origin, ecosystem impacts, processing techniques, and social impact. It is developing a supplier scoring system informed by ASC-MSC standards, which evaluates each potential supplier more thoroughly. Their sourcing strategy is guided by 3 pillars:
1. Cultivation & Processing Methods: Sway prioritizes seaweed regeneratively grown in polyculture settings to replenish and restore natural habitats, making exceptions for cases like sargassum – an invasive equatorial species that Sway is exploring as an underutilized resource through the Puerto Rico Studio project. Sway works closely with its seaweed suppliers to gather data on ecosystem impacts over time, processing footprint, and much more.
2. Global & Regional Diversity: Sway uses a diverse set of red and brown seaweeds from around the world as the base of its packaging technology. Seaweed is naturally rich in polymers (agar, alginate, and carrageenan), all of which Sway uses and explores in formulation development. With diversity as a top priority, Sway helps support the positive impacts of expanded seaweed cultivation while avoiding over-reliance on any one region or species.
3. Coastal Community Impact: All seaweed used in Sway materials is cultivated by farmers who are provided fair wages and good treatment. Sway champions suppliers whose #1 priority is positive social impact, such as supporting the transition to climate-resilient coastal economies with lobster fishermen in Maine, Indigenous communities in Brazil and Chile, and tourism-reliant communities in the Caribbean. And that’s just the beginning!
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