According to the UN, only 9% of 8.3 billion tons of plastic waste have been recycled over the past 65 years. In many situations, recycling is not economically feasible. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, many recycling methods cannot handle mixed waste and therefore require plastic to be sorted. Where chemical recycling can accept mixed plastic, the low efficiency of catalysts leads to high operating costs. This leads to increased recycling costs, limiting the real-world use of recycling technologies.

Plastalyst develops green, safe and efficient catalysts that make plastic recycling financially attractive. Our first product for recycling plastic waste on an affordable small scale is already in the prototype phase. It is a state-of-the-art catalyst that depolymerizes plastics at low temperatures, drastically reducing costs. Compared to other chemical recycling technologies, Plastalyst operates at only 180°C completely solvent-free. We recently were the first in the world to successfully depolymerize PET into methanol. With this technology, methanol as a fuel becomes easily available for utility companies. This suddenly allows to scale the hydrogen economy much faster. This year we are scaling this reaction to 1.2t size. AC Biode sells catalysts to chemical and waste management companies like Veolia, Remondis, Indaver etc. or provides licensing of the technology. We will also run recycling plants as joint ventures.

We have already spoken to 30+ chemical companies, such as Sabic, Pertamina, Shell, BP, BASF, Mitsubishi Chemical, etc. We have started piloting with some of them, we are not allowed to disclose yet. They are now sending us their waste including multi-layered plastic waste for testing.

EIT InnoEnergy led our seed and Genesia Ventures our pre-A round. Next year we will raise series A.