Enzymatic Depolymerization and Recycling

Using Enzymes to Convert Linear Waste Streams into Circular Supply Chains

In the coming years, enzymatic recycling will play a crucial role in solving the challenges of the fashion, apparel, and textile industries, as well as other industries using hard-to-recycle materials, that are in urgent need of diverse and innovative solutions to transform these traditionally linear waste streams into circular ones.  This sector has seen a significant increase in deal activity and investment in recent months and years, which is indicative of the global need to address growing volumes of plastic waste and the increased demand for high quality recycled plastic polymers and resins.

The Growing Waste Crisis

Currently, of the estimated 350 million tonnes of plastic waste produced annually, around 150-200 million tonnes will end up accumulating in landfills or polluting the environment.  This is expected to increase rapidly as plastic production is expected to grow by 70% to 600 million tonnes per year by 2050 with at least 20% of this expected to be PET.  These staggering figures all call for an immediate solution for reducing plastic waste and as well as for improved recycling systems.  This is especially the case as regulations on waste imports are requiring producers of plastic waste to search for domestic recycling solutions and extended producer responsibility laws require producers and manufacturers of packaging materials and waste to support collection and recycling.

Almost 500,000 tonnes of food-grade rPET (recycled PET) will be needed to meet the demand for voluntary and regulatory mandated commitments in the next decade.  This will require up to three times as much as the 150,000 tonnes of bottle-grade rPET that was produced in 2017.  Demand owners and product manufacturers will need to look for suppliers of high quality rPET or they will come up short on commitments.