Words by Holly Bodeker-Smith

Demand for recycled PET plastic has surged, showing us what a world without fossil fuel-derived plastic might look like and spurring a new breed of clean-tech recyclers. Meet the Australian startups at the fore.

It’s hard to overestimate the influence of polyethylene terephthalate, also called PET or polyester. One of the most-used plastics, it’s in our soft drinks bottles, synthetic clothes, and food packaging. PET is incredibly convenient: it delivers fresh water to remote areas and prevents infection spread in medicine. Yet much of it contaminates the land, rivers, and oceans. Today, there’s barely a place where you won’t find PET, from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the heights of Mount Everest. It’s hard to imagine how we could contain—let alone make use of—a material that has contaminated Earth on such a scale.

So when researchers discovered that a bacterium had evolved to break the molecular bonds of PET at a Japanese rubbish dump in 2016, they were understandably excited. In response to how much PET had polluted the environment over 70 years, this bacterium had naturally developed enzymes that use it as a food source.

If nature can be so dynamic, why can’t we? According to CSIRO, Australia only recycles 12% of plastic. The remaining 84% goes to landfills, waterways and the ocean. Yet change is afoot. In 2017, China announced it would stop recycling the world’s plastic, forcing Australia to modernise its recycling. Meanwhile, demand for recycled PET has surged; recycling infrastructure can barely keep up. This has triggered a new breed of startups creating sustainable and profitable solutions for PET waste.

Enviro-tech startup Samsara Eco is putting PET-eating enzymes to the test on a commercial scale. Their technology uses enzymes to break down plastic to its building blocks, which can then go into new plastics again and again. “We take polyester—be it a plastic bottle or football jersey—and break it down into monomers [or recycled PET] in about one hour,” said Samsara Founder and CEO Paul Riley. Samsara also tackles plastics that have traditionally been hard to recycle: coloured plastics, black meat trays, veggie punnets and more.

With this technology, Riley hopes to end reliance on fossil fuels for plastics production. Plastics are made from oil, gas, and their byproducts. And despite the well-documented environmental and human health fallouts of plastics production, petrochemicals companies show few signs of slowing. “50% of the fossil fuel market’s growth over the next 30 years is forecast to come from plastics production,” Riley said.

With that in mind, Riley isn’t stopping at recycling PET. “We'd like to have a suite of enzymes dealing with all plastics, so we can take a mixed bale into the facility, process all plastics and convert them into monomers.”

Samsara has raised $6 million to open a recycling plant in Sydney or Melbourne this year. And you’ll see their recycled veggie punnets on Woolworths shelves by October—the world’s first enzymatically depolymerised product. “Plastic creates enormous utility for us. It’s not going away. We need to recycle it, keep it out of the environment, and do that cost-effectively,” Riley said. Enzymatic depolymerisation is one way we can do that, and it’s taking hold globally—with companies like Carbios France investing in similar technologies.

Yet no single technology can solve this. BlockTexx is another enviro-tech startup recycling PET. Their SOFT (separation of fibre technology) process recycles polyester-cotton textiles into raw PET and cellulose (cotton’s backbone). They then sell this raw, recycled PET and cellulose into the Australian market.

Those materials aren’t going back into recycled textiles. The PET goes into tabletops, playground equipment, excavation retaining walls and more. “Our mission is to keep textiles out of landfills, not make more,” said co-founder Adrian Jones, who spent 30 years working in fashion before pivoting to the great textile cleanup. Jones described BlockTexx as “an act of atonement” for the hordes of clothes he has helped create.

That journey of atonement is about to reach its zenith, with BlockTexx opening its world-first, commercial-scale recycling plant in Logan, Queensland in June. Here, they’ll recycle 4,000 tonnes of textile in the first year, scaling up to 10,000 tonnes per year. They will focus on the under-reported commercial textile waste sector (think used hotel sheets, towels and tablecloths, uniforms and commercial laundry waste).

"Plastic creates enormous utility for us. It’s not going away. We need to recycle it, keep it out of the environment, and do that cost-effectively."

"PET serves a useful part in society and our world. But we need to move to a more circular rather than a linear usage of it."

The factory’s capacity is a fraction of the 1 million tonnes of textiles that go to Australian landfills annually. (The equivalent of burying 19 Sydney Harbour Bridges.) Yet Jones and co-founder Graham Ross are determined to expand and make recycling PET and textiles the norm. “PET serves a useful part in society and our world. But we need to move to a more circular rather than a linear usage of it,” Jones said.

There are great perks to cleaning up PET and plastics waste. According to CSIRO, increasing Australia’s recycling rate by 5% will add an estimated $1 billion to our GDP. These startups see themselves as just the tip of the spear. “We hope others will come into the industry with similar or complementary technologies that allow [recycling] to continue and expand,” Jones said. “There is a solution. But we all have to work together to get there.”

Words by Holly Bodeker-Smith