KELP! TOO MUCH SEAWEED!

SEAWEED IN THE Baltic Sea is becoming an environmental concern with increased amounts causing oxygen deficiency, therefore impacting marine life.

The rapidly multiplying blue-green algae is being harvested to create ingredients for food products and cosmetics. Finnish biochemist Mari Granström’s passion for scuba diving helped to alert her to the problem the

TECHNOLOGY

Spotify Paused

SWEDISH AUDIO STREAMING app Spotify is planning to announce job cuts. It is the latest technology giant to reassess its staffing numbers in the last year. toxic plant was causing the marine ecosystem.

Spotify, which recently saw its share price drop by 66 percent, has around 10,000 employees, and began the redundancies in October with 38 staff laid off from its podcast studios. It joins Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon in the cutting of workforces.

Origin by Ocean (ObO), founded by Granström, sources and separates unwanted seaweed into useable materials at ObO’s pilot processing facility in northern Finland using patented biorefinery technology. The extracts are utilised for a host of products, including a replacement for plastic.

Construction

Back To The Future Hotel

NEOM, A PLANNED smart city in Saudi Arabia, has revealed plans to open London-based hotel company, Yotel, in Oxagon - an octagonal floating business hub.

The fear of recession and a fall in advertising revenue have affected companies across the technology industry which saw the staff intake increase during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The futuristic hotel brand is scheduled to open in 2025 with a robot concierge, motorised SmartBedsTM, and fully integrated technologies which Yotel is known for. The surrounding areas and communities will be connected through advanced and autonomous mobility solutions.

The city’s name is derived from the first three letters from the Ancient Greek prefix for “new” and the fourth letter is from an abbreviation of an Arabic word meaning “future”.