Editor’s note: Around the world, innovative businesses are helping to solve some of the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Yet doing so can be risky. Conservation International’s investment fund, CI Ventures , provides support for early-stage companies that are benefiting people and nature. In this occasional series, startup founders join CI Ventures’ investment experts to share their stories. Plastic is pervasive. It’s in our air, lands and waters — and even our bodies . Each year, the United States alone generates 287 pounds of plastic per person, and less than 10 percent of that is recycled. The rest clogs landfills and oceans, endangering marine life and human health, and contributing to climate change . Sway , a California-based startup backed by Conservation International’s impact investment program, CI Ventures , is disrupting this cycle. Sway is using seaweed to replace the plastic in packaging like food wrappers and those ubiquitous single-use shopping bags.…