E58: ‘Cyclical’ plastic recycling for a more circular economy with MacroCycle

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Episode 58 • 12th February 2024 • The Keep Cool Podcast • Nick Van Osdol

Nick:

All right, Stuart, Jan-Gerok, it's great to have you on. I would love to dive right in and have you give folks kind of the zero to 60 or zero to 100 on Microcycle and what you all are trying to accomplish.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, thank you very much for your time and having us and hosting us. We're excited to talk about our story. Microcycle is the venture that is creating circular plastics with zero carbon emissions. We're able to take plastic waste of any quality, with our first product being PET plastics, and we're able to upcycle it to virgin-grade quality conditions with zero carbon emissions. And we're able to do this thanks to the great technology that my co-founder, Yannick Georges, was able to create during his PhD, where it takes 85% less energy to be able to recycle this plastic compared to our competitors.

Nick:

Understood. Yeah, and I think it's helpful context for some folks listening in that we all met for the first time earlier this year at the MIT Climate and Energy Prize, which was, I know, a big win for you all and sort of also a catalyst for your journey to really dive in the deep end and bring Macrocycle to fruition as a full-time business that you're working on. So perhaps, you know, it's a good opportunity to speak a tiny bit to that journey and everything that's happened in the past year before we start talking about, you know, the technology and what lies ahead for you all.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, I mean, the Clean Energy Prize was obviously one of the early highlights for us indeed, which happened basically half a year after Stuart and me met. So we met at MIT in a class called Climate Energy Ventures, which is an MBA class that brings in techies like me. And so that's where I pitched the recycling technology that I had developed over sort of the last 10 years about. Yeah, that's where the first seed was laid.

Nick:

Beautiful. And now still working out of MIT as I understand it.

MacroCycle:

Yeah. So we're currently headquarters of the engine and it's been a few months for us to get here. But the climbing energy prize was, I would say the first catalyst to making this venture into reality. That was the first time that we had won a public prize and we're starting to receive recognition and validation that not only the technology, but the business case was viable and attractive. So over the next few months, we're able to get a few more funding, and we are now headquartered at the Engine Accelerator in their office in Cambridge.

Nick:

Excellent, yeah. So the funding is definitely important, as is the attention and kind of the vote of confidence from people that there is something worthwhile to achieve here. So I'd love to talk a little bit more about, you know, the technology specifically, because I think when folks think about traditional recycling, there's been some pretty negative kind of media trends around that the past five, ten years. I think perhaps rightfully so, and you can tell me more about this. People take a rather dim view of traditional recycling. So yeah, let's just talk more about how macrocycle is fundamentally different than what happens normally, the blue bin.

MacroCycle:

Yeah we will be still taking some from the blue bin but really broadening the scope of waste that can be recycled. So really historically for the last hundred years we have become very good as a society to make plastics but the question how to make plastic out of plastic, like we know how to do it out of oil but make plastics from recycled plastic is really difficult and, So that is largely due to the current paradigm in recycling, which is mechanical recycling, where we collect all the plastics. There is some sorting, let's say by color and by type, but the sorting and also the mechanical recycling, how it basically shreds and melts plastic into a new shape is inherently degrading and limited in sort of cleaning and upgrading the plastics. If people are interested in chemistry, we can always dive very deep. But what happens, for example, on the molecular level is plastics are high quality, typically when they have long chains, and they become lower quality when the chains get shorter. And they basically literally get chopped up in the process. And so that is something that is the limitation that we have today. That's why there's a new paradigm, which is chemical or biological recycling. And quite a few, there's other technologies out there. like ours that are trying to do that. And it's basically reversing the paradigm of cutting these chains shorter, but really looking on a molecular level, what is a polymer chain? What is it composed of? Can we recover these monomers that make up polymer, which is the plastic, and can we recover them and then make them into new plastic? Those processes are out there and they can achieve what we call virgin-grade quality indistinguishable from fossil fuel, but they take a lot of energy. And so we have a different type of chemistry where we don't break any bonds, we make new bonds. And specifically, we're taking these linear chains, we're making them into cyclic structures. That's why we're called macrocycle, because chemistry-wise, they're called macrocyclic oligomers. And so we make those as an intermediate, and then turn them back into high quality plastic with much less energy.

Nick:

Understood. Yeah, you hit on a lot of things that I would have wanted to touch on at some point, and I'll probably pick out a few of them more deeply. No, no, it's good. I like the overarching framework of understanding this as fundamentally a shift from mechanical recycling to chemical. That makes good sense to me. I guess I'm always interested to ask, when people think about climate technologies, they think about solar and wind, maybe they think about UVs. And those are technologies where you've seen fundamental shifts in the efficiency of the technologies themselves, whether you think about a photovoltaic cell or the energy density of a battery. I'm always curious to ask, and it sounds like there's a lot that's unique to your approach, but I'm always curious to ask, are there specific broader tech trends over the past 10 years that have kind of unlocked the way that you do what you do? Or was it more kind of innovation and research where it was like, okay, like, we're the ones that are actually pioneering something fun, really different here.

MacroCycle:

I would say Honestly, I mean, we are developing new chemistries and new catalysts and new processes. But some of this stuff has been around for decades. It was just not useful and nobody cared about it because there was no one cared about plastic recycling or sustainability in the past. So really, we are using, I would say, some type of old forgotten chemistry. And some other folks in the industry are also digging out old technologies and optimizing them, applying them to the current problems. I would say there's quite a bit of technology already out there. But yeah, I mean, this is a plastics is a commodity business. So you need to squeeze, really make the processes very efficient. Because in theory, if you have unlimited amount of energy, unlimited amount of money, you can recycle whatever you want everything. But that's not going to happen, right? We don't want to just emit more carbon and waste money. No one's going to waste money in this market just to recycle plastic. So it's it's a really It's a game where the most efficient and well-engineered, best-engineered process wins.

Nick:

Right. So it sounds like while there's definitely still a commodity business, there is some of the business cases where it has been unlocked by virtue of the fact that there is demand for recycled, virgin-quality plastic. Is that right and fair to assume?

MacroCycle:

Yep. So what we've seen over the last few years, it's been developing for a little over a decade now, but for the last few years, it's just that there's a growing demand from a lot of the brands that utilize plastics to start incorporating recycled plastics to their product. Whether it's coming to realization of the impact that their products are having in the greater environment, as well as the growing conscience of the consumer base that's being more careful when purchasing future products. We're seeing more companies having to shift their supply of plastics in order to meet those growing concerns and demands in the industry. The issue, as it has been alluded throughout the conversation, is that it's too expensive to recycle. So the companies have to pay a premium in order to incorporate recycled plastics, which will make the end product a lot more expensive, which will cause other issues. So where we've seen the industry shifting is not necessarily in better products, but cheaper products. And where I will give Jan all the credit was that he was able to innovate a process that is able to create a better product for even cheaper. And that's where we see ourselves coming into this industry.

Nick:

Yeah, it's interesting how even though there might be some brands that would be willing to pay a slight green premium perhaps for recycled plastic, especially in this inflationary environment where it feels like everything's already getting more expensive anyways, ideally that green premium wouldn't exist at all. And at minimum, it certainly can't be massively significant. So yeah, that definitely makes sense for me as to why this is an important challenge area, not just to unlock Chemical recycling but also to make it accessible for the company or the consumer right and even the opposite is sort of also.

MacroCycle:

Relevant so even if you are paying a regular market price lovely there's no recycling for. three quarters of the models for example in the united states to the question is how do you actually unlock that potential how do you make municipalities choose a recycler over landfill which is dirty cheap if you have a lot of space you will rather landfill than paying someone more money to take off your stuff and recycle it. And only if sort of downstream in the supply chain. What's like us or you know yeah anyone down there after the recycle if they can pay the more money, and if there's more money in the supply chain, only then will people be incentivized to actually collect and sort of, yeah.

MacroCycle:

So I call this the Tesla problem, actually. So we are all aware that for many years, if not a decade plus, Tesla couldn't sell enough electric vehicles out there because they were not charging stations or the infrastructure to support all those electric vehicles. But the infrastructure and the charging stations were not being built because there were not enough electric vehicles in the market. So how did Tesla as a whole was able to solve that problem? Well, twofold. One, they were able to sell a premium product where they were able to charge that premium to enter the market. And two, they were able to lower the price barrier for those electric vehicles to make it easier to purchase those cars. That's what I believe Microcycle is doing in the recycling and the plastic industry, where we're providing a unique premium product that is basically recycled plastics from lower value plastic waste with zero carbon emissions, a preposition that no other competitor can do in the market right now. And then two, we're lowering the cost barrier by making our process significantly more efficient. We're better able to invest in the supply side of the equation and the infrastructure to actually be able to create what is needed to encourage and incentivize recycling in the country.

Nick:

Yeah, it's a grand challenge. I'm certainly impressed with how Tesla's made it work over the past 10 years. I think folks also sometimes forget that they almost went out of business a couple of times though, so it was certainly not without its significant challenges. And yeah, I think it is also worth, as you mentioned, Jan-Georg, that it's worth noting that It's not just purely a cost component. When we think about mechanical recycling facilities in the US, for instance, there's just a lot of materials that are fundamentally incompatible with the systems in those facilities and just can't be recycled as a result. I think cosmetics is a big category that struggles with that because of how small the containers are, for instance. So, yeah, this definitely satisfies.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, simply color. I mean, you can look at the resin price, the molecular level, say, the polymer resin is exactly the same quality, but it has a little bit of color in it. It sells at almost half the price. So simply using less color in your resins when you make plastics can already do a tremendous job, and I think companies are realizing that, too.

Nick:

Yeah, that's a whole other side of the conversation. We often talk about solving supply-side issues, whether it's in electricity generation or supply of recycled-version plastics, but then there's usually also things that you can tweak on the initial product formulation or on the demand side of the power sector with energy efficiency or things like that. So we need folks to come at this from all angles. I'd love to hone in a tiny bit more deeply on, you know, the actual kind of technology tech stack and some of the chemistry work that you all are doing. And I'm not a chemist by any means. I imagine some of the folks that will be listening to this are also not chemical engineers or even engineers. So I don't know, let's find a way to do it as if I'm a 12th grade high school student or something to that equivalent or maybe even 12 years old to break down the actual innovations you all are bringing to market.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, I can take a stab at that as I've been practicing this on my siblings, my younger siblings, to see if I'm able to exploit it. So we'll see. So essentially what the industry has done for many years with mechanical recycling is that they take the plastic chain, which is just many molecules together, and they basically shorten that molecule over time by shredding it and doing the mechanical processes. So if you think of quality as the length of the polymer, mechanical recycling just makes it smaller and smaller and smaller over time, eventually degrading the quality of the plastic. So that's what's commonly done in industry. Now, the new paradigm that Jan described earlier with chemical recyclers, what they do is that they take this plastic polymer chain and take all the molecules and they just break it apart. So they break the polymer into many, many molecules and then go through the additional process of reassembling all those molecules back together to produce the original polymer. As you can imagine, it's very energy intensive because imagine taking an axe and breaking every single bond and then putting them all back together. What macrocycle does that's so innovative is that instead of breaking bonds, we make new ones. What we do is that instead of breaking each bond of the molecules, we take the polymer chain and we just tie it with itself. We make a new bond to form a cycle. we're able to take this cycle and increase its quality. And then once we reach that desired state, we're able to separate the one bond that we made to get the polymer chain back of equal or greater quality. And as a result, it takes so much less energy because you're not breaking all those bonds compared to our competitors. You start making a new one. And that's a new paradigm the macro cycle is bringing to the market.

Nick:

Yeah, so maybe it's probably an oversimplification, but instead of doing the breaking and rebuilding, you effectively skip the breaking step and go straight to the rebuilding.

MacroCycle:

Yep, we bypass all those energy-intensive steps.

Nick:

Yeah, there's something beautiful about, you know, the circular nature of the chemical problem that you're working on and how it ties into, like, the concept of the circular economy. Nice overlaps in that respect.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, circular plastics with cycles. We should find a way to embed that into our catchphrase. But yeah, we'll take suggestions.

Nick:

Yeah, well, writing is my first and foremost format. This is my secondary one, so I'll give it some thought and see if I have any ideas. You've both alluded to throughout the conversation so far that there are other folks that are obviously involved in chemical plastics recycling. Is there anyone that's approaching this from the same way that you are, where it's really about skipping that step of breaking down bonds? Or have you not come across any competitors that are taking that specific approach?

MacroCycle:

I don't think there's anyone doing the skipping of breaking bonds as we do. Everybody is breaking bonds to some extent. Some more than others, and some less, and with different means. So you can do that with alcohols or with acids or with enzymes and each of them have pros and cons in terms of how efficient, how long the process is, how much energy it needs, how much yield it has, how complex of machinery it needs. So yeah, there's a variety of processes called methanolysis, glycolysis, enzymolysis. Everything has to do with lysis is in the term, again, just to throw out another chemistry term.

Nick:

But yeah, there's a variety of processes. Understood. And are you able to… Some of this, I imagine, might be under lock and key, but are you able to speak a little bit more to what the… I don't know if this is the right term per se, but what the catalyst for your process is? You mentioned some of the different types of things that are used in breaking down bonds, but what are some of the ingredients of the work that you do, if you're able to share?

MacroCycle:

Yeah, the innovation is mostly around the process itself, and actually one of the focus points that we want to ensure is that we are able to use standard catalysts so that they do not differ because the customers and the big plastic using brands and those companies. Take resin like the pellets that we produce and turn them into bottles they would like a so-called drop in solution so you still use our pellets and it should should be having exactly the same as what they used to. So that's why we are able to use standard catalysts. However, through our research, obviously we have tried others as well, and we can. And so really depends a bit on now going forward, working with other customers, with customers and with all the stakeholders in the market in the plastic chain. What will be the best way forward? Do we want to use the standard catalyst or do we want to use others that we actually have developed and that are also working? But Yeah, so that's going to be an answer that will be answered in the future. And it also comes down a bit to regulation. What is approved? What's not approved? What will have to be approved?

Nick:

Yeah, this ties us into maybe the beginnings of the business side of the conversation, which we hit on in the respect that there's certainly some tailwinds and demand for this. But I'd be curious how you all are thinking about the business model. Is it going to be more of a licensing play, or do you want to get to the point someday where you have your own massive recycling facility? Perhaps that's not part of your ambition. Yeah, I'd be curious to hear a bit more about that.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, so Microcycle's goal is to become the largest producer of upcycled PET through our sustainable upcycling process. So with that goal, what we aim to have is our technology be utilized as much as possible throughout the world. But at the end of the day, we need to first demonstrate that technology at scale. So our first initial business model and go-to-market strategy is that Microcycle will construct the first commercial plant at scale, the first of a kind, to validate that our product does resolve our customers' pain points at a large scale. And once we're able to validate this, we're then going to start looking into initiating the licensing approach, where we start licensing our technology, especially in the international markets outside of US and Europe, in order to increase the rate of penetration of our technology in the market. So we will start by owning the plants and selling the pellets and transition into then selling from only pellets to selling more plants.

Nick:

Okay. Understood. And talk me through kind of like the, you know, maybe attack plan is the best way to describe it, but for lack of a better word, sort of the approach to getting that first commercial facility up and running. I imagine that's something that you all are keenly focused on, you know, in the moment right now and perhaps haven't solved everything of, but yeah, I'd be curious to hear a tiny bit more about that.

MacroCycle:

Indeed. So our first pilot plan that we're constructing as we speak right now is a three times per year pilot that will allow us to be able to send products to our customers to validate that our product does resolve their pain points and actually can be turned into the bottles that they need. Once we're able to validate this and gather those letters of intent and validation, we're planning to scale up to 100 tons per year in the next two years. This scale will allow us to then be able to prove that we can reliably provide on-product spec over long periods of times at a larger scale. And we're planning to do this through a joint venture co-facilitation of the pilot plan demonstration plans with a potential customer. And once we're able to validate one or two of these units, that's when we start then getting into our first commercial plant. We're still looking into what is the ideal location where to locate this plant based on supply, regulation, competition, and so on. But the interesting challenge, and I actually just finished a few meetings about this, is how are we going to finance this large capital project? We're expecting it to be significantly cheaper compared to all our competitors, but it's still a multiple of tens of millions of dollars. So we're starting to look into the avenue for joint ventures, off-take agreements, project financing from the banks, as well as what is the minimum amount of equity financing that needs to be utilized in this project. Once we get to that scale, that's going to be one of the bigger challenges to ensure that we can roll this out at scale efficiently to allow us to then continue this with future plans.

Nick:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's something that I've been tracking with respect to other sectors, whether it's power sector or transportation. We've seen a lot of announcements and investment in manufacturing facilities in Europe and the US for electric vehicle batteries or solar photovoltaic cells. But there's always a lot that happens in between the announcement and the actual breaking of ground on the facility, then the construction of the facility, then, you know, there's a question of whether the facility actually operates in capacity. Does it hit its timelines? Does it come in on cost? Does it produce things at the cost that was originally projected? Yeah, a lot of good stuff to be working on and no small challenge, but certainly wishing you a lot of luck in that regard.

MacroCycle:

Let's see how it goes.

Nick:

Thank you. Yeah. I'd be curious if you're able to speak to the profile of a potential customer that you might work with in that joint venture that you were mentioning. What does that company potentially look like? I imagine you already have some targets.

MacroCycle:

Yeah, so our ideal partner for a joint venture is a potential customer. When you're looking at those potential customers, our beachhead market will actually be the cosmetic packaging industry. We see cosmetic packaging having a lot of benefits as a whole. Their products have higher margins, so they're better able to invest in sustainability. They have a lot of different products, meaning that it's easier for us to own all the plastic packaging of a product for co-branding purposes. On top of a few additional benefits, with the main one outside of those being FDA regulation is now mandatory in the cosmetic packaging. So we're able to introduce our product into the market quicker. It is beneficial by all means, but it's not an absolute must. And as a result, our first customers will be in the cosmetic packaging space. You can think of the L'Oreal and the Estee Lauder. After that, we want to transition into hygiene products such as PNG and Unilever. But then once we're able to establish ourselves in the market and understand how to sell into this industry, then we're going to target those big players like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, who have massive hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic usage every single year. At that point, we will have been able to scale up to a significant amount where we can be more than just a drop in the bucket for them.

MacroCycle:

Generally speaking, it's really anyone who is using plastics and specifically BT plastics now. So it is the big CPG brands, but also, you know, there's a fashion and textile industry as well and everything in between. So the beauty about our process is that we can tune the quality to the needs of the end user.

Nick:

I was going to ask about what FDA regulation specifically you're speaking to, because I imagine that ties into what you just mentioned around quality. What's the actual policy tailwind specifically for the cosmetics packaging industry?

MacroCycle:

When you sell food-grade packaging into, let's say, Coke or into whatever beverage or food you want to package, you have to have FDA approval. For most consumer products, you don't need the FDA approval, but the companies in that space do still appreciate that you have done those tests. And sort of one of the tests required to do so is basically you dope a toxic chemical into the feed waste that goes into your process. And then you run the process. And at the end of the process, the product, you will then really scrutinize and analyze how much of that toxic chemical is still left there. And so we did those tests. We didn't see the trace left in the final product. So there was a good signal that even especially in the first place at lab scale, we are able to comply with those FDA regulations once we actually file for FDA approval at a larger scale.

Nick:

Got it. And so that's also another potential advantage that chemical recycling confers, as opposed to mechanical, I imagine.

MacroCycle:

Yes. The mechanical recyclers have sort of devolatilization steps that take out toxic chemicals that are produced alongside, but they often struggle to take it out completely. And any chemical recycling has to do the same, but the processes, especially ours, lends itself to inherently removing impurities from the waste stream.

Nick:

I'm glad we've also started to introduce, you know, a little bit of a perspective on scale. I think you mentioned that, you know, first step is do a three ton a year kind of demonstration plant, then get up to 100 tons per year, then obviously mature from there. And I think we also mentioned that, you know, If you look at a beverage seller like Pepsi or Coke, they're using hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic per year. I'd also be curious, you know, just for a sense of scale, like what does the typical mechanical recycling facility have in terms of capacity, like recycling capacity per year in terms of tonnage to give folks sort of like another reference point as we talk about these scales? Maybe that's a question I need to go answer.

MacroCycle:

I think it can range from tens of thousands to even more than a hundred thousand of tons of waste processed. And that is similar for also the production. But most new facilities that are coming online for recycling are actually more in the order of 10 to 20,000. And so we're planning to have such a facility as well. We believe we can be profitable at a few thousand tons a year. It's always economies of scale that play into these plans. But yes, SuiteLiveAfter will be scaling to a large extent, as Stuart mentioned, also with a licensing model to really reach a broad market and to expand globally.

Nick:

Beyond thinking about things like financing, the demonstration plant, and then the pilot plant, what are the other core challenges that you're focused on? I imagine that perhaps expanding the team in a smart and conscientious way is a big part of it, but I won't put the cart before the horse.

MacroCycle:

Well, at least, you know, I guess Yan and I complement each other really well because, you know, we also think of the different challenges to keep us up at night. While Yan might be thinking a little bit more of the technology, I'm definitely more focused on the team, the business and all those things while still helping each other out. For me, a team is a really big focus. I have worked in teams that were not diverse from many perspectives, whether it was race, ethnicity, education, perspective, backgrounds, origins. So the team that I want to build is a team where every culture, every nation, every language is represented ideally. So it's something that I'm spending a lot of time making sure that we start with a pipeline, getting diverse candidates to apply to our positions, and then making sure that we're properly able to evaluate them all fairly and justly throughout the process to make sure that we can still end up with a strong team without any sacrifices while hiring a very diverse team. Just a day actually earlier, we had a hiring workshop for the Breakthrough Energy Fellowship that really helped me, helped us get ready for that process. So that's something that I want to make sure that I spend a lot of time in. I have heard horror stories of teams, companies failing because they hired the wrong people and didn't fire them fast enough. So I would ideally like to hire the right people off the bat and never have to worry about firing.

Nick:

Right, yeah. And I think given how global of a challenge and problem plastics recycling is, it makes sense that global perspectives on the team will also benefit you all. And yeah, secondly, I would just echo your sentiment around it. There's always a lot of emphasis and focus on the financial capital, but the human capital is at least just as important, if not more important, a quotient to consider.

MacroCycle:

Absolutely. And I would double down on that in saying that the employees are really what is carrying the company, right? You know, we come at it with my background in the technology and students background also coming from chemical engineering background in oil and gas and from the business perspective. But really, we're hiring people who will carry this technology forward and develop new ideas and create new intellectual property, new patents will be written in the future. Papers, you know, parts of the technology that I have not yet envisioned will be generated by the people that we hire. employees are really the most critical piece in any scaling up. And so we're excited. We're currently, you know, along the fundraise, we are hiring, and we have our job offers out there, and we're getting already the first influx of interest. And luckily, it is looking pretty diverse, which I appreciate, both from the background, like personal, but cultural, but also really the technical background, which is amazing. And Stuart and me are both tapping into our own networks, Stuart is actually currently in Houston recruiting from his previous role and network that he has, and I am recruiting from anywhere I have been in the world, sort of in Europe, spent most of my time at academia, UK Zurich, Germany, and now in Boston as well. There's such a great talent pool that we're currently tapping into, and we're so excited to meet everyone and see who wants to tackle this challenge of plastic recycling with us.

Nick:

Right. Yeah. And it feels like, you know, potentially a ripe opportunity for some folks who, yeah, have that oil and gas experience, that petrochemical plastics experience, perhaps to make the switch to something that benefits rather than does harm. So, yeah, that's at least my soft plug for anyone that might be listening. But I'm sure that good folks will come from all backgrounds, as we've discussed. Never too late to pivot. Anything else that kind of comes up around that kind of headwinds question or things that keep you up at night? I'd be curious. I'm sure there's always constant innovation happening on the tech side too, but I'm curious if there's anything that, not that you're waiting around for, but that you're kind of monitoring or tracking could also be on the policy front that you feel like would unlock things for you all even further.

MacroCycle:

I mean, on the technical side, certainly we're just on the edge of our seats to see the results that all the effort that we put into the scale-up come to fruition and really work with the customers and get the feedback, right? So we have great results from the lab, and we validated that those specs are relevant, that the specs are looking good as to what customers and what the people in the marketplace using plastics really want. But getting that actual feedback, shipping our stuff, our upcycle of zero-carbon, ship those pallets out to the customers and have them run it on their machines. And for them to come back with feedback is sort of the biggest excitement right now. And maybe on the policy front, you know, Europe is a bit more advanced. So there is already regulation in place that sort of requires minimum recycled content. Those mandates are slowly also appearing in the United States. So that's monitoring that carefully. And as Stuart mentioned earlier, where we will build the first real big commercial plan for Macrocycle is also determined by what the regulation looks like in each of the United States states, or in Europe, or wherever else in the world.

Nick:

Yeah, well, I'll be very keen to catch up in another six months or year and do some of that reflection on the heels of this conversation around, like, all right, what did they actually go and accomplish, and what was that feedback from customers and stuff like that? So I'll be looking forward to that and reading for you. I always also like to kind of broaden at the end and ask just broadly, you know, what else in climate and energy, even if it's not stuff that relates to macrocycles business, but you know, we have founders working on all different types of problems come on this podcast. So it's always cool to hear what else you all might be excited about or what else you, you know, maybe in a different life would be working on.

MacroCycle:

I can start that in the sense that before Microcycle, before business school, I was working at a hydrogen startup. And I really do see promise when it comes to using hydrogen to decarbonize the hard-to-electrify sectors. So any sectors, electricity slash batteries is not going to be the solution. I truly do believe hydrogen is the way to go. And what I can tell you at least is that I'm keeping an eye in that market. I think a lot of the challenges are not in the generation, but more in the infrastructure side of the equation.

MacroCycle:

I think something that I'm excited about technologically as well is maybe, well, coming from a bioplastic background, I need to mention it. So I think bioplastics have some great potentials in the future, while now we with Microcycle are really focusing on the recycling and keeping things in the loop. There will be bioplastics coming online and being produced, and we'll be hopefully looking forward to recycle them. But there is some bioplastics that can actually not only be zero carbon, but can also be carbon negative, and can basically store CO2 away from the environment, from the atmosphere. And yeah, carbon negative material is something I think.

Nick:

topic. 100%. We had a founder on previously and their business was focused on actually, you know, taking captured CO2 and integrating that into kind of their plastics manufacturing process. So definitely a lot of different ripe avenues to get at it. And there's a lot of companies that are working with, as you mentioned, kind of, you know, more of the wonders of nature, whether it's fungi or something kind of by cortisol related to approach those problems to which I always think is interesting. To close, for folks that might be interested, whether in applying for a job or just following along with your progress, where are the right places for people to find more information and pay attention?

MacroCycle:

Yeah, I would definitely encourage everyone to go to our website, www.macrocycle.tech to learn a bit more about our technology and our process. And definitely reach out and connect to LinkedIn at Macrocycle Technologies. That's where we put a lot of our updates and we'll have our job posting. And that's where we're going to make our announcement as well when we officially start our newsletters to start informing the public on a consistent basis of the great accomplishments that we're going to be making. I encourage everyone to reach out and stay in touch because it's going to take all of us working together to be able to create a circular, greener future for everyone.

Nick:

Fantastic. All right. Thanks so much, gentlemen. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for tuning in. So you don't miss the next episode on another cutting edge climate tech. Make sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. We'll see you soon.

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