Plastic recycling has fallen short. Only about 9% of all plastic is recycled globally, which sounds bad until you compare it with textiles. Only 0.5% of textiles are recycled.
One of the biggest challenges is that textiles are seldom one material. Buttons and zippers complicate matters, but spandex is even worse. Novel synthetic blends have made for clothing that is a dream to wear but a nightmare to recycle.
Stewart Peña Feliz, co-founder and CEO of MacroCycle, explained the difficulty. He stated that the challenge to recycling is that you can never predict your waste, as your waste has an infinite number of contaminants.
MacroCycle has developed a shortcut that promises to make recycled plastic as inexpensive as virgin material. The startup has devised a way to pluck desirable synthetic fibers from waste textiles, leaving everything else behind. MacroCycle is a Top 20 finalist in Startup Battlefield and is presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.
Peña Feliz knows the potential pitfalls of plastic recycling well. Earlier in his career, he helped run ExxonMobil’s chemical recycling plant, which uses heat to break down plastic into simpler hydrocarbons. It works, but the process is energy intensive and spews a lot of carbon dioxide. He said that he saw that firsthand and knew something had to be done.
Soon after he left Exxon, Peña Feliz decided to pursue an MBA at MIT. There, he met Jan-Georg Rosenboom, who as a postdoc had developed a novel way of recycling plastics. Peña Feliz said that when he saw his technology, he thought it was too good to be true.
The pair started turning that technology into a business in the fall of 2022. The following spring, they were selected for a Breakthrough Energy Fellowship to develop it further. Peña Feliz recalled that they looked at each other and said they guessed they were doing this full time. MacroCycle raised a $6.5 million seed round earlier this year.
To understand plastic recycling, it helps to know a bit about the material’s chemistry. Plastics are polymers, which are long chains of monomers, or repeating chemical building blocks. Most chemical recycling processes break plastic polymers down into smaller components, including monomers, so they can then rebuild them into something indistinguishable from virgin plastic.
MacroCycle differs because it does not break down polymers. Instead, it loops the polymer chains back on themselves, forcing them into rings called macrocycles. Those macrocycles remain behind as different solvents wash away contaminants, which themselves could be recycled. Later, the rings are reopened to reform the polymer chain. Peña Feliz explained that as they open up, the rings want to combine with each other, and in polyester, the longer the polymer, the higher the quality.
He added that by not having to retrace all those steps all over again, they are able to take a significantly more energy efficient approach. MacroCycle’s process uses 80% less energy than is needed to make virgin polyester, while other chemical recycling processes use 20% to 30% less.
The startup is in the process of setting up a larger reactor, one that is 2,000 times larger than the one they were using two and a half years ago. Peña Feliz said it is large enough to produce 100 kilogram batches of material for customers to sample. MacroCycle is generating revenue from fashion brands interested in the technology.
He stated that they are comfortable being one of the few, if not the only, public chemical recyclers that can claim they can provide this material at price parity once they build their first industrial facility.
He is convinced it is the only way for recycled plastic to replace fossil fuels in the industry. He said 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 wants to create a technology so economically attractive that the opportunity cost is really high for them to not adopt this new type of solution.