Plastic recycling has fallen short. Only about 9% of all plastic is recycled globally, which sounds pretty bad until you compare it with textiles. Only 0.5% of those 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’s a dream to wear but 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, told TechCrunch. “Your waste has infinite number of contaminants.”
MacroCycle has developed a shortcut, of sorts, 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.
“I saw that firsthand and knew something had to be done,” he said.
Soon after he left Exxon, Peña Feliz decided to pursue an MBA and MIT. There, he met Jan-Georg Rosenboom, who as a postdoc had developed a novel way of recycling plastics. “When I saw his technology, I thought it was too good to be true,” Peña Feliz said.
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