The Seaweed Choking Caribbean Beaches Is Being Turned Into Plates, Packaging, and Building Blocks

From Stinky Seaweed to Dinner Plates: The Sargassum Revolution Is Happening Right Here

Every summer, Puerto Morelos locals know the drill. The wind shifts, the water turns brown, and the smell of rotten eggs drifts across the beach. Sargassum season is back.

But something big is changing, and our little town is right at the center of it.

A Costly Problem Gets a New Answer

Hotel and business leaders across Cancun and the Riviera Maya have launched a project called Caribe Circular to stop treating sargassum like trash and start treating it as a raw material. The tourism industry faces substantial costs for beach cleanups and disposal.

Ignacio Muñoz, director of The Seas We Love, says the project will begin by turning sargassum into biodegradable plates, spoons, cutlery, packaging, and cardboard boxes for use in local hotels and restaurants.

Caribe Circular is also negotiating a deal with an international logistics company to put at least 30% sargassum content into boxes used for online shopping deliveries.

More than 150 hotels and nearly 600 restaurants have already signed on, including members of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association.

Puerto Morelos Is Ground Zero

Here is where it gets personal for us. Puerto Morelos is not just a bystander in this story. The state government has chosen our town as the site for the Polo de Desarrollo de Economía Circular para el Bienestar, or Poecibis.

This is a 38-hectare special economic zone where private companies and researchers will process sargassum into new products, with tax incentives to attract investment.

A 14-month biogas pilot program in Cancun already proved that sargassum can be combined with hotel wastewater sludge to produce industrial-scale biogas. That model is now being replicated at the Poecibis facility in Puerto Morelos.

Puerto Morelos was also chosen for a reason beyond politics. Our reef, part of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef running just 500 meters offshore, naturally intercepts a large portion of the sargassum before it even hits the beach.

That makes our coastline one of the best places in the region to study and collect the algae before it decomposes.

What They Plan to Make With It

The product list goes well beyond plates and forks. Caribe Circular is targeting bioplastics, biomaterials, bioenergy, bio-agricultural fertilizers, and even dental materials. In Puerto Morelos, compressed sargassum blocks are already being tested as building materials for homes.

Caribe Circular aims to expand statewide, targeting more hotels and restaurants while creating jobs and increasing sargassum processing capacity.

What This Means for Our Beach

For now, the daily cleanup continues. The Mexican Navy, municipal crews, and hotel brigades are all working together to keep our beaches clean, especially the two Blue Flag-certified beaches, Ventana al Mar and Playa Sol.

The vessel Natans is operating in shallow waters offshore to intercept sargassum before it lands.

The bigger picture is this: the seaweed that has been our headache for over a decade may soon become one of Puerto Morelos's most valuable exports. That is not a bad trade.