Not Just a Delicious Snack, Seaweed Turns Out To Be The Key To Save The World

For Korean or Japanese culinary connoisseurs, surely you are no stranger to seaweed. From making sushi wraps or kimbap to a sprinkling of rice. In recent years, Indonesia has also been flooded with seaweed snacks from Thailand which are finally popular among young people. If it's more traditional and native to Indonesia, seaweed is usually processed into jelly or jelly snacks, which are popular as souvenirs from Lombok. Of course, if we think of seaweed that comes to our mind, it's a matter of the stomach, aka to be eaten.

At least that's the opinion of world scientists. As reported by Futurism, although no one expected, it turns out that seaweed has great potential to help humans fight global warming. As we all know and can feel together, the earth is becoming increasingly unfriendly to live in. From the hottest temperature records that are broken every year, to various extreme weather and natural phenomena that are increasingly occurring.

Seaweed absorbs more CO2. Using 9% of the ocean to grow seaweed alone would have a huge impact

One way to fight global warming is to reduce the CO2 content in the atmosphere. For this reason, there are often tree planting and reforestation programs. Trees and plants are believed to be able to convert CO2 into oxygen. But there is another solution that is more promising guys. Still reported by Futurism, if only 9% of our oceans were planted with seaweed, it could remove 53 billion tons of CO2 or carbon dioxide from the earth's atmosphere every year. This seaweed plant is also sturdy, it will last a long time and reduce CO2 continuously. It seems that reforestation and tree planting are not enough in bare forests. Underwater reforestation will also be very useful.

Livestock emissions also contribute to pollution. If all farm animals are fed seaweed

Maybe many don't know that gas emissions from livestock, or exhaust gases released by livestock, actually contribute 44% of methane gas in our atmosphere. Well, it turns out that the solution is also with seaweed. If all livestock 'diet' by eating seaweed, the methane content of livestock exhaust gases can be reduced. A concrete example, if you add dry seaweed to be mixed with cattle feed, then the methane gas content released by cows is reduced by up to 99%. It turns out that cow farts have an effect, guys. With this seaweed diet, it's also good so that the gas they emit is not too thick.

If the material for our cellphone batteries is replaced with seaweed-based ones. It turns out to be cheaper and lasts twice as long

So far, we use cell phone batteries with lithium-ion base materials. It was later discovered that lithium-sulfur can be much more effective. Reporting from Wired, lithium-sulfur is able to save twice as much electricity reserves, even though the price is relatively cheaper. Red seaweed is one solution to realize this lithium sulfur technology. Even seaweed can stabilize lithium-sulfur batteries, you know. If the cell phone battery can be saved, we can also save the electrical energy that we use. Imagine the broad impact if everyone uses lithium sulfur, of course, the electricity saved will be very large.

Maybe what people say is true. Sometimes what we are looking for is exactly where we are. Like seaweed, we don't need complicated technologies to make big changes to the impact of global warming. Even without the need to dream of moving from planet earth. Multiplying seaweed simultaneously is quite helpful for nature.