Future Bio, a Berkeley, California-based startup, is working to commercialize a new plastic that can be easily broken down into its basic components, reducing the need for petroleum products and creating circularity for the plastics industry. 

According to a profile by NBC New York, the company is focused on chemical recycling for existing materials, where plastic polymers are broken down into the monomers they were created from, while also pitching an all-new plastic alternative. 

"When it's back to the material, it's going to be equivalent to the new material we use to produce our plastics," Zilon Wang, co-founder and CEO, told the outlet. 

"What we can do is we offer the plastic and we offer a way to recycle it with a very low-cost method, and the recycling rate is very high."

This effort joins a number of other innovative companies working to find solutions to the world's plastic addiction, but there's plenty of work to be done before significant change can happen. 

Over 462 million tons of plastic are created each year, with around 50% designed to be used once and then discarded. 

Unfortunately, recycling efforts to curb this pollution have largely been unsuccessful, with only 9% of the waste actually being recycled. 

In addition, an estimated 12% of plastics get incinerated, with the remainder ending up in landfills or discarded directly into the environment, where secondary pollution — including microplastics — is a factor.

Following five years in a laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, Future Bio became the first tenant at UC Berkeley's Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials. There, it aims to develop its technology for real-world industrial applications.

While plant-based, biodegradable alternatives are on the rise, 99% of plastics are still made from highly polluting dirty fuels, and Future Bio is looking to change that. 

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"We hope they will replace all kinds or most kinds of the petroleum-based plastic in the market," Wang told NBC. 

According to the company, it's working on developing a microbial platform that transforms renewable feedstocks into high-performance monomers. These can be polymerized with recyclability at the forefront of the new design. 

"Our materials enable both in-house scrap reuse and large-scale circularity, offering a sustainable and scalable alternative to conventional plastics," its website explained. 

Coolbrook, a Finnish technology company, has developed a way to chemically break down certain plastics more efficiently, helping to advance recycling efforts for increased sustainability.

A team of scientists at ETH Zurich recently discovered a new way to break down plastic polymers into their basic components — similar to Future Bio's plan — through the use of solvents and the application of violet light.

Wang told NBC that the company is hoping to deliver a product in two to three years that would be a more expensive, durable plastic used for furniture or plastic tools, as opposed to a solution for inexpensive plastic bottles, leaving room for other innovators to step in.  

To sway investors during a time when the U.S. administration appears unwilling to support green initiatives, Wang sees profitability as a key to success.

"If we really want to push all these things forward, the profit is most important," Wang concluded in the article. "We hope with a new technology, all the parties involved in this industry, they can make the profit and then people can build the circular economy with a self-motivation."

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