India's Sustainable Blue Economy: The Imperative for Chemical-Free Marine Bioproduct Processing
India's blue economy must shift to chemical-free processing for marine bioproducts to achieve genuine environmental, economic, and climate gains. Current chemical extraction methods lead to significant sustainability challenges, high costs, and toxic effluents. Global best practices demonstrate viable chemical-free approaches, offering reduced environmental impact, lower costs, and enhanced local benefits. India needs integrated policy action, R&D, and financial incentives to adopt mechanical, thermal, enzyme-assisted, and microbial processing for a truly sustainable blue bioeconomy.
India's blue economy ambitions hinge on transitioning to chemical-free processing pathways for marine bioproducts, rather than solely scaling marine bioproducts. The article highlights that current chemical-based extraction methods, used for marine biomass like microalgae, macroalgae, and fisheries residues, are environmentally unsustainable. These processes involve strong acids, alkalis, high freshwater use, and produce toxic effluents, leading to significant economic and environmental footprints, hindering scalability, and creating inconsistent feedstock quality, particularly in India. Without clear policy and monitoring, these initiatives risk being camouflaged as green. Global best practices, exemplified by companies like Cyanotech (Hawai'i), Marinova (Australia), and Ocean Harvest Technology (UK), showcase the success of chemical-free extraction. These methods result in high-quality products, international certifications, reduced environmental impacts, and strengthened local economies. The benefits of such a transition are multifaceted, including reduced environmental impact, lower greenhouse gas emissions, decreased freshwater consumption, reduced compliance costs, improved alignment with ESG standards, and the creation of new employment opportunities for coastal communities through decentralized value chains. Despite these advantages, India largely continues to rely on conventional chemical extraction due to outdated infrastructure, established industry norms, and low capital investment costs. The article advocates for exploring chemical-free solutions as strategic pathways, including mechanical, thermal/hydrothermal, enzyme-assisted, and microbial processing. These methods retain biomolecule functionality, significantly reduce wastewater generation, and can be easily decentralized. Indian companies like Sea6Energy are already successfully applying hydrothermal conversion. To build a truly sustainable blue bioeconomy, India needs coordinated policy action, strengthened research and development, financial incentives, and market entry facilitation to minimize environmental impact and establish itself as a global leader in marine bioproducts.
