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2025 TAS Australian of the Year Sam Elsom
Australian Community Media
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1/20/2025
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.
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00:00
On the east coast of Tasmania we're working on exciting science, which will have an enormous
00:04
impact on global warming and meeting our emissions reduction targets.
00:09
Seaforest's goal is to reduce methane emissions in livestock.
00:12
We do that through the cultivation of red seaweed called asparagopsis, which we grow
00:17
on an 1800 hectare marine lease and also in land-based ponds.
00:21
The seaweed is harvested and processed into a product we call seafeed and fed to livestock.
00:28
Way it works is an animal will eat a tiny amount of this product and it reacts with
00:33
enzymes in their stomach, basically improving their digestive process and stopping the formation
00:38
of methane.
00:39
This is important because methane as a greenhouse gas has 84 times the warming effect on our
00:45
planet as regular carbon dioxide.
00:48
And about 70% of agriculture's emissions comes from the methane produced by livestock.
00:54
Methane is a short-lived atmospheric gas.
00:56
It's only in our atmosphere for around 12 to 20 years.
00:59
So that's why it's not just a big problem, but an amazing opportunity.
01:03
We think about what we have to achieve within the next decade.
01:07
So by mitigating these emissions, we can effectively reduce global emissions by 13% and have a
01:14
two-fold effect on the planet by 2030.
01:17
It's kind of magic that you're able to get something from the ocean, feed it to a land-based
01:23
animal and affect this outcome.
01:25
But it was a very exciting discovery and it's a discovery that we've been able to scale
01:29
and are now creating real impact in the world.
01:31
One of those exciting outcomes is when you can collaborate with companies who also have
01:36
the same vision and care.
01:39
One of those was when we launched a low-emissions burger or low-emissions milk products.
01:45
We happen to be one of the most biodiverse places on the planet for seaweed.
01:48
There are many, many other opportunities within seaweed and potential applications
01:54
that we could create from Australian native seaweeds.
01:57
I guess I've spent most of my career working in sustainability.
02:01
I care deeply about the environment.
02:03
We're in this window of hope and the window of opportunity when it comes to trying to
02:08
reverse or avoid the worst possible outcomes.
02:11
So that for me was the real driver, that and thinking about the future on this planet for
02:16
my children and my grandchildren.
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