{"id":159859,"date":"2025-03-19T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T06:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=159859"},"modified":"2025-03-12T13:16:32","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:16:32","slug":"from-high-school-science-project-to-18-3m-ai-accelerated-enzymes-are-coming-for-fast-fashions-plastic-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/from-high-school-science-project-to-18-3m-ai-accelerated-enzymes-are-coming-for-fast-fashions-plastic-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"From high school science project to $18.3M: AI-accelerated enzymes are coming for fast fashion\u2019s plastic waste"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

A U.K. startup, originating from founder Jacob Nathan\u2019s high school science project on using enzymes to break down plastic waste, has secured an oversubscribed $18.3 million in Series A funding.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jacob Nathan \u00a9 Epoch Biodesign<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Founded in 2019 in London, Epoch Biodesign is now a 30+ strong multidisciplinary team of chemists, biologists, and software engineers. The startup will use the new funding to scale up production of its plastic-eating enzymes. This means transferring the biorecycling process from the labs where the team has been developing the enzymes to their first production facility this year, which Nathan says will be able to gobble through 150 tons per year of waste once it\u2019s up and running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thereafter, the first production runs of commercial-scale capacity are expected by 2028 if not sooner, as Nathan says the startup is looking for ways to accelerate the scaling. They\u2019ll be roughly doubling the size of the team over the next 12 months as they work on switching to a higher gear, he tells TechCrunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plastic not so fantastic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Stepping back for a second, the world\u2019s plastic waste problem is staggeringly vast, with some 400 million tons of the stuff produced annually, according to the UN<\/a>. Only a tiny fraction of this gets recycled currently, as, in crude cost terms, it\u2019s far cheaper to pump out more virgin plastic than deal with processing the stuff we\u2019ve already produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the environmental and health costs of unchecked plastic pollution are stark. So there is growing pressure on regulators to act on plastic pollution<\/a> and on businesses that use plastic in their products to clean up their act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also a growing number of startups working on technologies targeting plastic waste from various angles \u2014 including startups applying AI to speed up sorting plastics for recycling<\/a> and others developing non-fossil-fuel-based plastic alternatives<\/a>. But biorecycling<\/a>, leaning on biological entities to help break down resistant waste, is where Epoch Biodesign hopes to make its mark on plastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biotech is developing a library of plastic-eating enzymes with the goal of disrupting the plastic pollution cycle by powering up biorecycling-based circularity \u2014 starting with a handful of plastics that are used in common synthetic fabrics. The first materials they\u2019ve developed enzymes to tackle are polyester and two types of nylon (nylon 6 and nylon 66).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A graphical animation of the process on its website<\/a> depicts waste garments going in at one end, being industrially sorted and\/or pre-treated, depolymerized, purified and repolymerized, and then ready-to-use nylon (extrusion) or polyester (pellets) coming out the other end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

GenAI to the rescue?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While some plastic-eating enzymes have been discovered existing in nature, the catch is they are very<\/em> slow at digesting this stuff \u2014 far too slow to help humanity escape its plastic waste mountain on any useful timescale. It\u2019s also the case that we have produced far more types of plastics than enzymes have been found in the wild that can break them down, as yet. And as the plastic keeps piling up, the need for speed increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epoch wants to lend a helping hand to evolutionary ingenuity by using technology tools to accelerate the discovery of biological catalysts that can tackle plastic waste fast. And key to unlocking this mission are developments in generative AI \u2014 specifically the rise of powerful large language models (LLMs) \u2014 that are helping accelerate the search for biological agents that can be precision targeted at this problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe challenge with biology is that it\u2019s just too complicated,\u201d explains Nathan<\/strong>. \u201cHumans don\u2019t understand how it works. We\u2019ll never be able to rationalize it. Most of these biological questions that we have remain unanswered. So the big shift here has been our ability to understand large, complex datasets \u2014 which is effectively AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just sort of un-baking the cake and then putting things back together at the other end,\u201d he also says of what this biorecycling process boils down to. He adds that it only takes a \u201cmatter of hours\u201d to go from waste fabrics to reclaiming molecularly identical material (nylon or polyester) in a form that\u2019s ready for reusing to make new clothes or other products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He describes enzyme design as a \u201cridiculously large search problem\u201d to tackle. But by turning to GenAI, the startup\u2019s scientists have essentially been able to shortcut sifting through possible combinations of amino acids and proteins to land on potentially useful agents \u2014 fine-tuning LLMs with information on proteins and amino acids but also feeding in \u201cproprietary data\u201d from its own lab work on plastic-eating enzymes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to generate tens of thousands of plastic-eating enzymes in our lab that are unique,\u201d he<\/strong> says, explaining that after querying the AI models to yield promising candidates they switch to lab tests and then feed in more data from their results on the \u201cpredicted enzymes\u201d to keep iterating the model until the search turns up \u201can enzyme that performs in the way that we want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re effectively doing is we\u2019re concentrating hundreds of millions of years, billions of years of evolution into a few cycles in the lab that happen over the course of days, weeks, months,\u201d he<\/strong> adds. \u201cWe\u2019re making big evolutionary jumps that would be very unlikely to happen just naturally based on random mutations, natural selection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Epoch\u2019s AI-driven enzyme design search has also enabled it to \u201cpretty regularly\u201d get speed improvements on enzymes in the region of 25x, according to Nathan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThat means we can use less enzyme in our process,\u201d he<\/strong> notes. \u201cWe can make less of it. The [capital expenditure] associated with manufacturing that enzyme in the first place goes down. And ultimately, all of that translates into a lower cost of goods for output.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not the only company out there which is trying to design biology to do different things \u2026 but we really think we\u2019re quite unique in the approach we\u2019re taking in applying these tool sets to recycling \u2014 and then to our flavor of recycling: biorecycling,\u201d he<\/strong> adds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Focus on cost and commercial scale<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So far, the startup has built three \u201cbest-in-class processes to recycle three very chemically distinct types of plastics\u201d \u2014 and scaling those to commercially useful volumes is next on the slate with the new Series A cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re building our first production facility in the U.K. this year for our first nylon process,\u201d he<\/strong> says, claiming: \u201cThese technologies use entirely new biochemistries. They completely shift the cost bases of recycling into new areas that basically makes recycling the cheaper option compared to virgin.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A key part of why Epoch is able to drive down recycling costs is the fact its process doesn\u2019t require high temperatures to run \u2014 saving on energy costs compared to other forms of recycling that require the waste to be heated and\/or melted. Nathan also points out that this means a lower capex for this (lower power) recycling facility \u2014 shrinking overall project costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biological recycling process is also \u201cincredibly high yield\u201d compared to industrial recycling \u2014 he says they\u2019re getting upward of 90%, meaning most of the waste that\u2019s fed in is coming back out the other end in a reusable state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, there\u2019s no \u201cunwanted side products\u201d from biorecycling \u2014 which, again, reduces the cost and complexity of recycling the plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAll of these things add up, basically, to reduce cost across the board of the process and get us into a position where \u2014 at that commercial scale \u2014 we\u2019re reaching cost competitiveness with the materials that are on the market today made from fossil carbon,\u201d he<\/strong> suggests. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Production of the enzyme itself involves a microorganism that\u2019s been genetically engineered to include the DNA for making the enzyme and housed in a fermenter so it can replicate and churn out lots of the plastic digesting stuff \u2014 a synthetic biology technique that\u2019s used for many other types of applications, from producing chemicals to novel foods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epoch\u2019s approach to recycling plastic could have some additional benefits, as Nathan suggests it could incorporate additional purification \u2014 by having the enzymes also \u201cscrub\u201d undesirable chemicals \u2014 since some plastics contain chemicals that can cause concerns for recycling the material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he concedes that even biorecycling of plastics won\u2019t fix the problem of microplastics where tiny pieces of plastic can wash out of garments that are made from synthetic fabrics and find their way into the environment \u2014 posing a hazard to biological life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, he argues we\u2019re going to be stuck needing to use synthetic plastic for decades, adding: \u201cI think it\u2019s really important that new synthetic plastic is made from old materials, not from newly extracted fossil carbon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designing enzymes to digest other types of plastic waste \u2014 such as packaging \u2014 is a wider goal for the startup. Although Nathan says they are focused on fabrics first as it\u2019s a huge problem that\u2019s also been getting more public attention. The business case also looks cleaner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, the startup\u2019s Series A includes a strategic investment by Spanish fast-fashion giant Inditex, owner of clothing brand Zara, which has inked a multi-year \u201cjoint development agreement\u201d with Epoch \u2014 clearly with an eye on improving the sustainability of its business at a time of rising public awareness vis-\u00e0-vis the fashion industry\u2019s role in the global plastic crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe want to produce material that\u2019s actually useful,\u201d notes Nathan<\/strong>. \u201cWe want to produce something for brands that is, you know, indistinguishable from the stuff that they\u2019re using today \u2014 so in order for that to be true, we need to go through various tests. We need to do this at larger and larger and larger scale. And so having, effectively, the machinery of a business like Inditex with the scale that they have just helps us accelerate that process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Series A round is led by the climate-focused fund Extantia Capital, with Day One Ventures, Happiness Capital, Kibo Invest, Lowercarbon Capital, and others also participating alongside Inditex, and a $1 million grant from the U.K. government. Epoch Biodesign\u2019s total capital raised to date is now $34 million, including the latest raise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A U.K. startup, originating from founder Jacob Nathan\u2019s high school science project on using enzymes to break down plastic waste, has secured an oversubscribed $18.3 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2019 in London, Epoch Biodesign is now a 30+ strong multidisciplinary team of chemists, biologists, and software engineers. The startup will use the new funding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":159872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"The startup Epoch Times will use the new funding to their first production facility this year, which Nathan says will be able to gobble through 150 tons per year of waste","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,17143],"tags":[24550,18431,5796,5840,25612,14462,23249,12468],"supplier":[21925],"class_list":["post-159859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","category-recycling","tag-arteficialintelligence","tag-biorecycling","tag-biotechnology","tag-enzymes","tag-fastfashion","tag-plasticwaste","tag-sortingtechnology","tag-textiles","supplier-epoch-biodesign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159859"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=159859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}