2025 TAS Australian of the Year Sam Elsom

Meet Your Australians - 2025 TAS Australian of the Year Sam Elsom. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.

Transcript

00:00On the east coast of Tasmania we're working on exciting science, which will have an enormous

00:04impact on global warming and meeting our emissions reduction targets.

00:09Seaforest's goal is to reduce methane emissions in livestock.

00:12We do that through the cultivation of red seaweed called asparagopsis, which we grow

00:17on an 1800 hectare marine lease and also in land-based ponds.

00:21The seaweed is harvested and processed into a product we call seafeed and fed to livestock.

00:28Way it works is an animal will eat a tiny amount of this product and it reacts with

00:33enzymes in their stomach, basically improving their digestive process and stopping the formation

00:38of methane.

00:39This is important because methane as a greenhouse gas has 84 times the warming effect on our

00:45planet as regular carbon dioxide.

00:48And about 70% of agriculture's emissions comes from the methane produced by livestock.

00:54Methane is a short-lived atmospheric gas.

00:56It's only in our atmosphere for around 12 to 20 years.

00:59So that's why it's not just a big problem, but an amazing opportunity.

01:03We think about what we have to achieve within the next decade.

01:07So by mitigating these emissions, we can effectively reduce global emissions by 13% and have a

01:14two-fold effect on the planet by 2030.

01:17It's kind of magic that you're able to get something from the ocean, feed it to a land-based

01:23animal and affect this outcome.

01:25But it was a very exciting discovery and it's a discovery that we've been able to scale

01:29and are now creating real impact in the world.

01:31One of those exciting outcomes is when you can collaborate with companies who also have

01:36the same vision and care.

01:39One of those was when we launched a low-emissions burger or low-emissions milk products.

01:45We happen to be one of the most biodiverse places on the planet for seaweed.

01:48There are many, many other opportunities within seaweed and potential applications

01:54that we could create from Australian native seaweeds.

01:57I guess I've spent most of my career working in sustainability.

02:01I care deeply about the environment.

02:03We're in this window of hope and the window of opportunity when it comes to trying to

02:08reverse or avoid the worst possible outcomes.

02:11So that for me was the real driver, that and thinking about the future on this planet for

02:16my children and my grandchildren.