Turning plastic waste into a valuable resouce: Epoch Biodesign.

The multidisciplinary Epoch team in their state-of-the-art London labs

Congratulations to Epoch Biodesign on the announcement of their oversubscribed $18.3M Series A round! The round was led by our friends at Extantia Capital, joined by multinational clothing company Inditex, Happiness Capital, Kibo Invest, Day One Ventures, and KOMPAS VC, alongside existing investors Lowercarbon Capital and a $1M UK government grant. The funding will allow Epoch to build their first commercial-scale plant and expand their enzyme technology to tackle even more types of plastic waste

Jacob with some textile waste recycled back to monomers

We first met Epoch's incredible CEO, Jacob Nathan, back in 2020 when he was not long out of school and we had just closed our first fund. Jacob was bringing together a team in labs at Liverpool University to fix plastic waste, based on an idea from his school project. We were so impressed by his vision and capability that we made two investments in Epoch in 2021.

It had taken us a while to see plastics as a climate problem rather than a broader environmental one. But when we started digging into it, we realised that plastics accounted for 1.8Gt CO₂e/year, some 3.7% of global GHG emissions, between the energy required to extract and refine the crude oil feedstocks, fugitive emissions, and production of monomers and finally polymers. Then there's the end-of-life disposal, which often involves incineration (2019, Our world in data). While using less plastic is obviously a great idea, it seems clear that plastic is too useful to stop using - in fact, it's forecast that plastic use will triple from 400M metric tons in 2022 to over 1.3B in 2060, driven largely by increased use in packaging in emerging economies (OECD). And the sad truth is that however hard we try to put plastic in the recycling bin, only 9% is actually recycled (NPJ) - the majority is incinerated, even in the UK.

So what's the solution? We saw so many replacement plastics companies, and recycling solutions which came with high energy and price premiums, often with compromises on material properties to boot. It didn't feel like any of them were going to fix the problem, between lack of economic incentives, inadequate performance, and not fixing the end-of-life issues.

Enter enzymatic recycling: true recycling of plastic's value

Epoch are pioneers of enzymatic recycling - taking a nature-inspired low-temperature process which breaks down plastics, and supercharging it using AI and genetic modification. The result: engineered enzymes which can turn polymers back into monomers at low temperatures and ambient pressures, ready to be reused, with exactly the same properties as virgin material. This elegant solution aligns incentives by turning plastic waste back into a valuable feedstock, enabling closed-loop recycling and reducing our dependance on continued fossil fuel extraction.

We've been huge supporters of Epoch from their start, and we are so excited to see them scaling their process from the lab. Their first demo plant, funded with this investment round, will be able to process 150 tonnes of waste a year. Epoch plans their first commercial-scale plant in 2028. The first products they are working with are nylon 6 and nylon 66, both commonly found in leisure wear.

Excited by their story? Epoch will be doubling the size of their team over the next year - check out their hiring page.

Read more coverage at Techcrunch and on Extantia's blog.

Epoch's labs