At MacroCycle, we revive end-of-life plastics. We will protect the world through our circular, zero-carbon, upcycling process.

The Plastic Problem

5 MILLION+

metric tons of plastic enter our waters per year.
That is one truck load dumped into the ocean per minute, which eventually ends up as microplastic in our food.1

5%

of global CO2 emissions are associated with the plastics industry.

That is more than all of Japan’s emissions, the 5th largest CO2 emitter in the world. 23

80%

of plastic “recycled” today still ends up in our landfills, in our oceans, or it gets incinerated.

"Plastic recycling could eliminate our plastic dependency on fossil fuels and keep plastics out of the environment, but current technologies fail to deliver either on quality, cost, or emissions - which are critical to provide a fully Circular Plastic Economy."
- MacroCycle CTO

Mission

MacroCycle believes that chemistry holds the key to enabling fully circular plastics, made without carbon emissions. We want to protect our world through our circular, sustainable, zero-carbon upcycling process.

With the globe’s leading experts in ring-chain chemistry and MIT engineers on our team, our patented technology takes plastic and polyester waste to produce virgin-grade mPET (MacroCycle-PET) resins, specially crafted to fit your needs and products.

Products

Plastics are very useful materials, but their initial value to society becomes a massive burden at their end-of-life.

Our mPET (MacroCycle-PET) resin can meet your sustainability goals including satisfaction of PCR regulations, lowered Scope 3 emissions, and elimination of ocean-bound plastics as a consequence of fossil fuel-derived plastics.

Our proprietary process based on the synthesis of cyclic macromolecules (macrocycles) enables us to produce virgin-grade recycled PET from plastic waste at 80% lower energy use than traditional processes.

The remaining portion can be powered through renewable energy to produce it with zero carbon emissions.

Technology

Recycling

Output
High Quality Plastic
Pricing
Market Rate
CO2
0 Tons
Waste
No Land Fill

Mechanical Recycling

Output
Low Quality Plastic
Pricing
Low Cost
CO2
0.9 Tons
Waste
All to Land Fill

Chemical Recycling

Output
High Quality Plastic
Pricing
High Cost (Premium)
CO2
3.7 Tons
Waste
No Landfill


Recycling

Output
High Quality Plastics
Pricing
Market Price
CO2
0 Tons
Waste
No Landfill

Mechanical Recycling

Output
Low Quality Plastics
Pricing
Low Cost
CO2
0.9 Tons
Waste
All to Landfill

Chemical Recycling

Output
High Quality Plastics
Pricing
High Cost (Premium)
CO2
3.7 Tons
Waste
No Landfill

Meet Our Team

Co-Founders

Stwart Peña Feliz

Co-Founder, CEO

Stwart is a former ExxonMobil process engineer and holds an MBA from MIT Sloan Business School. His skill set includes manufacturing, design, and process operating experience of large-scale units, including plastic pyrolysis operations from his time at ExxonMobil. He has scaled up technologies from the bench scale and also held leadership positions at a previous climate tech startup that went on to raise a $30M Series B round.

Jan-Georg Rosenboom

Co-Founder, CTO

Dr. Jan-Georg Rosenboom is a Polymer Scientist from MIT’s Langer Lab, plastic sustainability consultant and TEDx speaker on plastic recycling. He has a PhD from ETH Zurich where he developed polymerization processes based on Ring-Opening Polymerization, where his work on PEF is currently being commercialized by SULZER. His skill set includes polymer chemistry, synthesis and analytics, life cycle assessment, process design, and kinetic simulations. He is an author on 18 scientific papers with >1000 citations, and 2 patents.

Team Members

Thanaphorn (Eam) Feinberg

Polymer Scientist

Thanaphorn is a polymer scientist with a strong background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with four years of experience in polymer science research from Clark University and MCPHS University. Her work focused on developing a novel polymer-based non-viral gene delivery vehicle. Her diverse background in biochemistry and pharmaceuticals adds a unique perspective to the MacroCycle team.

Edoardo Terreni

Chemical Process Engineer

Edoardo Terreni is a Chemical Engineer and is an expert in MacroCycle technology through his PhD thesis “Optimization of a New Recycling Technology for Polyesters” at the Politecnico Di Milano in Italy under the supervision of Prof. Storti and Prof. Moscatelli. He also brings industrial experience working as a process engineer at ENI, Italy’s largest petrochemical company.

Andres A. Granados Focil

Reaction Engineer

Andres is a Material Scientist and Reaction Engineer from MIT's Román-Leshkov group. He obtained a PhD from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, using that knowledge to then implement technologies for converting wet waste into fuels and chemicals as a Research Scientist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. During his Post-doc at MIT, he focused on addressing new catalytic strategies for plastic waste chemical upcycling where he designed and built high-temperature and high-pressure flow reactors to achieved optimum experimental design focused on commercial scale-up. Catalysts synthesis, material characterization, analytics, reactor design and process operation of energy intensive units are within his skill set in this field.

Our Partners

Investors and Grant Providers

Macrocycle News

MIT Delta v Demo Day 2023

MIT Delta v Demo Day 2023

Contact Us

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