A lot of what we buy is packed in Styrofoam. It's hard to recycle and it's not biodegradable but a Santa Cruz County firm is looking to replace Styrofoam with a biodegradable packing made from shrimp.

"We're looking at replacing plastic packaging, specifically expanded polystyrene Styrofoam with our nobble technology using Chiton, which is the second most abundant biopolymer on the planet. And essentially we want to get rid of the enormous amount of plastic trash that's going into our ocean every year,” Cruz Farms CEO and co-founder John Felts said.

Chitin is the main ingredient in shrimp shells, and Cruz Foam has been using it to make biodegradable plastics.

Felts says he got the idea while surfing. 

"We identified the kind of ridiculous situation where you have surfers in the ocean a lot of times really eco-conscious environmental people riding around on trash. And when you think about it, that trash is plastic foam,” Felts said.

Cruz Foam hopes to make an immediate impact in the fight against climate change with their new foam.

“Just our first customers alone have on the order of nearly fifty thousand two hundred thousand metric tons of EPS that they use every year. And if we ever replace that, that would be an enormous impact,” Felts said.