U.S. and European investors, MacroCycle is enabling a circular plastics supply chain beginning with PET bottles and polyester textile waste
MacroCycle Technologies, a developer of a novel PET & polyester textile waste upcycling technology, announced the close of a $6.5M seed financing round. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures and Volta Circle, with participation from KDT Ventures and Neotribe Ventures.
MacroCycle will use the funding to grow its operations by 50% and scale its pilot plant facilities to develop its upcycled PET & polyester resin with initial customers.
Plastic production and disposal constitute more than 5% of global CO2 emissions. Today, only 15% of the plastics are recycled, while the remainder is disposed of in landfills and waterways or is incinerated. While the industry has attempted to break this cycle, waste contamination and energy intensity remain two major barriers to efficient plastics recycling.
Filtering through heterogeneous, contaminated recyclable materials and breaking down components into reusable end products has been too cost-intensive to be commercially adopted as a replacement for fossil fuel-derived plastics.
“Global plastic waste is expected to triple in the next 40 years, and current mechanical and chemical recycling methods are not able to deliver viable solutions to process plastics and textiles waste streams,” said Clean Energy Ventures Managing Partner Temple Fennell.
“MacroCycle’s solution to upcycle plastics tackles an increasingly severe waste issue to create an economically and environmentally circular plastics supply chain.”