Plastic recycling has fallen brief. Solely about 9% of all plastic is recycled globally, which sounds fairly dangerous till you examine it with textiles. Solely 0.5% of these are recycled.
One of many largest challenges is that textiles are seldom one materials. Buttons and zippers complicate issues, however spandex is even worse. Novel artificial blends have made for clothes that’s a dream to put on however a nightmare to recycle.
“The challenge to recycling is that you can never predict your waste,” Stwart Peña Feliz, co-founder and CEO of MacroCycle, instructed TechCrunch. “Your waste has infinite number of contaminants.”
MacroCycle has developed a shortcut, of kinds, that guarantees to make recycled plastic as cheap as virgin materials. The startup has devised a technique to pluck fascinating artificial fibers from waste textiles, leaving every part else behind. MacroCycle is a High 20 finalist in Startup Battlefield and is presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.
Peña Feliz is aware of the potential pitfalls of plastic recycling properly. Earlier in his profession, he helped run ExxonMobil’s chemical recycling plant, which makes use of warmth to interrupt down plastic into less complicated hydrocarbons. It really works, however the course of is vitality intensive and spews a variety of carbon dioxide.
“I saw that firsthand and knew something had to be done,” he mentioned.
Quickly after he left Exxon, Peña Feliz determined to pursue an MBA at MIT. There, he met Jan-Georg Rosenboom, who as a postdoc had developed a novel means of recycling plastics. “When I saw his technology, I thought it was too good to be true,” Peña Feliz mentioned.
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The pair began turning that expertise right into a enterprise within the fall of 2022. The next spring, they have been chosen for a Breakthrough Power Fellowship to develop it additional. “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we’re doing this full time,’” Peña Feliz mentioned. MacroCycle raised a $6.5 million seed spherical earlier this 12 months.
To know plastic recycling, it helps to know a bit concerning the materials’s chemistry. Plastics are polymers, that are lengthy chains of monomers, or repeating chemical constructing blocks. Most chemical recycling processes break plastic polymers down into smaller elements, together with monomers, to allow them to then rebuild them into one thing indistinguishable from virgin plastic.
MacroCycle differs as a result of it doesn’t break down polymers. As a substitute, it loops the polymer chains again on themselves, forcing them into rings known as macrocycles. These macrocycles stay behind as completely different solvents wash away contaminants, which themselves might be recycled. Later, the rings are reopened to reform the polymer chain. “As they open up the rings want to combine with each other, and in polyester, the longer the polymer, the higher the quality,” Peña Feliz mentioned.
“By not having to retrace all those steps all over again, we’re able to take a significantly more energy efficient approach,” he added. MacroCycle’s course of makes use of 80% much less vitality than is required to make virgin polyester, whereas different chemical recycling processes use 20% to 30% much less, he mentioned.
The startup is within the technique of organising a bigger reactor, one which’s 2,000 instances bigger than the one they have been utilizing two and a half years in the past, Peña Feliz mentioned. It’s massive sufficient to provide 100 kilogram (220 pound) batches of fabric for patrons to pattern. MacroCycle is producing income from vogue manufacturers within the expertise, he mentioned.
“We’re comfortable being one of the few, if not the only, public chemical recyclers that can claim that we can provide this material at price parity once we build our first industrial facility,” Feliz Peña mentioned.
He’s satisfied it’s the one means for recycled plastic to switch fossil fuels within the business. “The bottom line drives a lot of innovation, and if you want to have players like ExxonMobil change the way they do things, it will not happen from the inside,” he mentioned. “I want to be able to create a technology so economically attractive that the opportunity cost is really high for them to not adopt this new type of solution.”
If you wish to hear from MacroCycle firsthand, and see dozens of extra pitches, attend worthwhile workshops, and make the connections that drive enterprise outcomes, head right here to study extra about this 12 months’s Disrupt, held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
