New Plastic Recycling Method Achieves Cost-Parity With Virgin Plastic

Single-use plastic might just be the most insane act of collective self-harm humanity commits every single day.

Each year, the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that we discard a staggering 400 million tonnes of plastic waste—a grotesque leap from just 2.1 million tonnes in 1950. At this rate, we’re on course to triple plastic pollution to over a billion tonnes annually by 2060, , according to the environmental news site Earth.org. All of this is fueled by relentless production and shoddy waste management.

Our track record is dire. Around 60% of plastic waste is dumped in landfills or the natural environment, according to the British waste management company Business Waste. Only 15% gets recycled; 17% is incinerated; and over 22% is littered directly into ecosystems. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade in any meaningful way—it fractures into toxic micro- and nanoplastics that contaminate everything from Arctic snow to deep-sea trenches.

The consequences are grim. Plastic pollution drives biodiversity loss, killing an estimated 100,000 marine mammals, as estimated by the nonprofit Surfers Against Sewage, in addition to one million seabirds every year. Microplastics are now found in human organs—livers, kidneys, even placentas—and plastics leach chemicals linked to cancers, developmental disorders, and immune dysfunctions.

Faced with this slow-motion catastrophe, how can we step up to turn the tide? And why hasn’t more been done to treat plastic pollution like the human health and ecological crisis it is?

The Entrepreneurs Fighting The Plastic Pandemic

Samantha Anderson, Co-founder and CEO of DePoly, was plagued by these questions during her PhD when she read about microplastics being discovered inside human bodies. “We noticed no one was offering a complete solution to the problem,” she told me in an interview. “The recycling industry, especially the oil sector, had been misleading people for decades about what plastic recycling could actually achieve.”

Investigations by NPR and PBS Frontline, among many others, revealed a chilling truth: plastic manufacturers knowingly sold the myth of recycling, all while cashing in on virgin plastic sales. As one former industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn’t true.

Global giants like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Starbucks have been repeatedly identified by journalists as top plastic polluters. Despite some virtue signaling in the form of flashy green pledges, genuine action has been slow, dubious and patchy.

So Anderson and two fellow PhD students decided they wouldn’t wait for the system to fix itself. With backgrounds in chemistry, they set out to engineer a new chemical recycling method. Within six months, they cracked it—and DePoly was born. “We started scaling up from there,” Anderson recalls. “What began as a tiny side project is now a company of over 40 people.”

Breaking the Recycling Barrier

What sets DePoly apart is their ability to tackle the types of plastic waste that conventional methods can’t touch: dirty, complex, multilayered materials like household waste, textiles, and post-industrial scrap. Traditional mechanical recycling can’t handle this mess; DePoly’s low-cost, low-energy chemical process can.

Using safe, everyday chemicals—nothing exotic or dangerous—their technology recycles PET, polyester, and more, achieving what the startup itself estimates is a 65% lower CO₂ footprint compared to producing new plastics from fossil fuels, all while rescuing many tons of plastic from landfill.

And crucially, DePoly’s recycled materials aim for cost parity with virgin plastics—a game-changing milestone.

“Packaging is an enormous, cutthroat industry,” Claire Hae-Min Gusko, founder of sustainable packaging innovation company one•five, told me in an interview. “Margins are razor-thin.”

Big brands answer to shareholders who demand quarterly growth. Already, many major companies are quietly abandoning their sustainability goals: “and shareholders don’t seem to mind,” she adds. “If anything, they’re willing to accept it if it means growth continues. It’s a harsh truth about the state of our capitalist markets, but it’s a reality. Sustainable packaging has to be affordable; there’s no way around it.”

From Lab Bench to Global Impact

With the promise of offering both cost-parity and sustainability, DePoly is ready to compete with virgin plastic and has a scale-up journey that is both methodical and ambitious. They are currently building a pre-commercial plant to serve as a blueprint for full industrial facilities. Their first commercial plant is slated for 2027–2028, targeting markets in Europe, North America, and potentially Asia.

Anderson still marvels at the scale of progress. “Seeing something that started as a 400-milligram lab sample now operating in a massive warehouse—it’s surreal. It’s amazing to see a vision we dreamed about actually come to life,” she says. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to bring in new team members who fully embraced the challenge and push the process even further than we imagined.”

Location choices are strategic, factoring in local waste streams, regulatory landscapes, and economic incentives. And everything is geared toward one goal: mass-market competitiveness.

Chemical recycling is no silver bullet—but it’s a huge leap forward. “It’s the logical next step after mechanical recycling,” explains Hae-Min Gusko. “Chemical recycling can create higher-quality materials, closing the loop for plastics that would otherwise end up as trash.”

Still, challenges remain. Infrastructure investment, political will, and public awareness all lag behind. The waste industry already struggles with tight margins and tricky feedstocks; “for chemical recycling to become a significant part of our recycling rates in the next 5-10 years, a huge amount of infrastructure investment and change will have to take place in the waste industry,” she adds.

Fueling The Recycling Revolution

DePoly recently closed a $23 million funding round led by MassMutuals Ventures, making it one of Europe’s top-funded recycling tech startups. The company is fully focused on converting plastic waste into virgin-quality raw materials without fossil fuels.

Yet, for all the innovation that is possible, change won’t come overnight. Change is often dependent on governments pushing industry through regulation.

“Industries are trying to improve, but it’s slow,” says Anderson. “Still, the trends are in our favor. Regulation is tightening. Consumers are demanding better. Companies are actively looking for real solutions.”

European regulations, like the Green Deal and the new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, are poised to reshape markets, forcing companies to prioritize recyclability and recycled content. For sectors like hospitality, additional rules under the Single-Use Plastics Directive will drive shifts toward reusable containers and natural polymers.

“The world of packaging is not a mystery: its future is being written by government policies and regulations such as the EU Green Deal,” explains Hae-Min Gusko. Looking at the EU alone, a closed-loop technology such as DePoly’s fits well with the EU’s vision for the future of its waste infrastructure.”

“By 2028, we’ll know whether these policies have had the expected impact,” explains Hae-Min Gusko. “If they have, it’ll be a turning point not just for Europe, but globally. Key markets in Asia, like Japan and South Korea, are already following similar regulatory paths.”

The AI Accelerator Changing Global Businesses

One wild card accelerating change? Artificial intelligence.

AI is already transforming industries by boosting efficiency, but packaging and materials development remains a massive challenge due to its complexity and deep-rooted expertise, says Hae-Min Gusko.

Her AI platform aims to change that – using AI to design new packaging solutions and move directly to mass production, skipping the costly, time-consuming testing loops—”It may sound ambitious, but with AI evolving rapidly, we believe it’s within reach.”

Anderson is optimistic but clear-eyed about the road ahead: “The tipping point will come from making recycling cost-competitive and giving waste real economic value.”

“We’re close,” she says. “We just need that final push.”

With the world drowning in plastic and big polluters under mounting pressure, solutions like chemical recycling can’t come fast enough. Whether policymakers, investors, and industries move quickly enough to seize the moment will define the future health of our planet.

Time, after all, is running out.