TeardownOctober 9, 2026
Neela’s microbes are not yet a tank of certified jet fuel
The £2.1 million funding supports scale-up, while feedstock conversion, fuel upgrading and qualification remain distinct steps.
Writing
Explainers, teardowns, and myth-busting on waste management systems and green engineering.
72 postsReset filters
Teardown posts
TeardownOctober 8, 2026
Reclinker makes a cement route inside steel recycling
Reactivating demolition cement in an electric arc furnace uses existing infrastructure, but feedstock, standards and carbon boundaries still matter.
TeardownOctober 7, 2026
StreamGo’s PFAS system: capture is not destruction
Claims of 99% capture and thousandfold concentration need compound-specific tests and a fluorine balance for the destruction stage.
TeardownOctober 6, 2026
A MOF can catch metals. Can it keep working in a treatment column?
High batch adsorption capacity is a starting point, not a specification for continuous wastewater treatment or rare-earth products.
TeardownOctober 5, 2026
Covestro’s foam loop: 99% aniline purity does not mean 99% recovery
A planned 2,000-tonne pilot targets a useful chemical from insulation waste; product yield and scale remain separate questions.
TeardownOctober 3, 2026
Plastic pyrolysis: nameplate capacity is not operating performance
Closures and underutilisation expose the gap between making an oil and running a profitable plastic-to-plastic system.
TeardownOctober 2, 2026
Reju’s two-minute polyester claim leaves most of the process outside the stopwatch
Fast depolymerisation is not the same as fast textile recycling; sorting, purification and future plant operation determine the result.
TeardownOctober 1, 2026
Brightly food-rescue credits: the food is real, the baseline needs scrutiny
Food rescue can fund climate benefits, but credits depend on additionality, the alternative disposal route and verified accounting.
TeardownOctober 1, 2026
India’s e-waste tax notice: paperwork is not a material balance
Reported allegations involving appliance companies reveal why invoices, recycling certificates and physical processing need separate verification.
TeardownSeptember 30, 2026
TNO's laser solar recycling: 99.998% silicon, unknown throughput
A nanosecond-laser process recovers silicon and silver from old panels at 97% rates and very high purity. The open questions are panels per hour and cracked real-world modules.
TeardownSeptember 29, 2026
Seventeen towers recover caesium and rubidium — from ore waste, not batteries
The reported recoveries are impressive; feedstock, solvent balances and independently checked operating data determine their meaning.
TeardownSeptember 28, 2026
Mercury injected underground 'forever': a teardown of VLS Texas Molecular's disposal claim
The U.S. has had nowhere to put elemental mercury since the export ban. A Deer Park, Texas facility now stabilises it and injects it deep underground. It fills a real gap — with an undisclosed chemistry and a 10,000-year model.
TeardownSeptember 28, 2026
NYC curbside organics: 72.5% growth, 8% capture — and why enforcement stopped working
New York's mandatory food-scrap programme nearly doubled collection in FY2026. It still captures 8% of available organics, and a second round of ticketing barely moved participation.
TeardownSeptember 27, 2026
MacroCycle and Meta: a recycling deal made of credits, not plastic
Meta will buy environmental attribute credits from MacroCycle's solvent-based PET recycling. The chemistry is novel. The plant does not exist yet, and Meta is not buying any recycled material.
TeardownSeptember 26, 2026
Zeolite and bamboo biochar concrete: stronger, CO2-absorbing — and about 2,000 years from paying back
An Indian lab mix swaps half the fine aggregate for zeolite and 1% of cement for bamboo biochar. Strength goes up; CO2 uptake is 1.2 g a day in a concentrated chamber. The scale maths is sobering.
TeardownSeptember 25, 2026
Greyparrot at Sunset Park: counting 91,000 lost cans a day is not the same as saving them
Greyparrot's cameras say 89% of aluminium passing a Brooklyn MRF is recoverable. That is a measurement of loss, not an improvement in recovery — the pilots that would show that have not run yet.
TeardownSeptember 25, 2026
Veolia's $27 billion hazardous waste warning: real regional gap, self-serving headline
A Veolia-commissioned report says a 1% treatment capacity shortfall could cost $27 billion by 2033. EPA says there is enough capacity to 2049. Both can be partly right.
TeardownSeptember 24, 2026
Republic Services' 250 electric trucks: real progress, wrong headline
Electric collection trucks work, and Republic has proved it at city scale. But they are about 1.5% of its fleet — and its landfills' methane dwarfs anything coming out of a tailpipe.
TeardownSeptember 23, 2026
Bobine's 'electrified plastic recycling': striking numbers, no independent evidence
The French startup claims +45% yield, −60% energy and −45% cost by heating a catalyst with induction to turn plastic waste into olefins. Every figure is self-reported, and none has a baseline.
TeardownSeptember 22, 2026
The Recycling Partnership's 'Evolving Ton': excellent data, no prescription
Cartons up 61%, mixed paper down 34%, plastics now outweigh paper in U.S. recycling. The new report is the best picture of the bin we have — and says almost nothing about what to do.
TeardownSeptember 21, 2026
$8.4 billion in rare earths in coal ash? What WPI's bio-inspired project has actually shown
A $3.3M NSF grant will study how diatoms and sponges handle silica to pull rare earths out of coal ash. The headline number is real content, not recoverable metal — and the project has no results yet.
TeardownSeptember 20, 2026
BASF's ecovio Is Certified Home-Compostable. Two Data Sets Are Missing
A PBAT and PLA blend with TUV OK Compost Home certification. The disintegration is tested. The barrier performance and the microplastic question are not.
TeardownSeptember 19, 2026
The "AI Will Create 40 to 60 Times More E-Waste" Claim, Examined
The Basel Action Network's projection is arithmetically defensible and widely misread. Most of the forecast tonnage is not servers.
TeardownSeptember 18, 2026
Worn Again Has a Polycotton Recycling Plant. Half of It Is Running
Separating polyester from cotton is textile recycling's central unsolved problem. Worn Again's Swiss facility has module one commissioned and module two on paper.
TeardownSeptember 17, 2026
Envetec Says It Can Recycle Biohazardous Medical Waste. What Is Actually Proven?
On-site shredding and disinfection that turns regulated medical waste into recyclable polymer flake. The disinfection is certified. Most of the headline numbers are not.
TeardownSeptember 16, 2026
HBI's EVA3: Four Known Sludge Processes, Wired Into One. No Numbers Yet.
Hydrothermal carbonisation, gasification, energy recovery and phosphorus capture in a single automated plant near Treviso. The integration is the novelty — and the performance data is absent.
TeardownSeptember 16, 2026
Cairo's CanBank Machines Take the Cans. The Zabaleen Were Already Taking Them.
Two reverse vending machines in Dokki pay phone credit for bottles and cans — the exact fraction that has funded an informal collection economy for a century.
TeardownSeptember 15, 2026
Pirelli, Pyrum, BASF and Synthos: A Tyre Loop With an Accounting Step in the Middle
Four companies, six steps, and one link where the recycled content is attributed rather than physically traced. The pyrolysis is real. The loop is partly bookkeeping.
TeardownSeptember 15, 2026
EverestLabs Navigator: Agentic AI for MRFs, Announced by Press Release
Three stacked AI layers, a claimed 30 percent throughput gain, and one named customer. The architecture is plausible. The evidence is a launch announcement.
TeardownSeptember 14, 2026
Coway's Microbial Food Waste Disposer: 0.7 kg a Day and One Unverified Number
Coway has launched a kitchen unit that digests food scraps with microbes cultured from doenjang rather than grinding and drying them. The mechanism is genuinely different. The throughput ceiling and the missing data are the story.
TeardownSeptember 12, 2026
Aduro's Hydrochemolytic Route: Water-Mediated Plastic Conversion, and the Refinery Problem It Does Not Escape
Aduro says its water-based chemistry converts waste plastic and heavy oil at lower temperatures than pyrolysis. Even if that holds, the output is still a feedstock that a refinery has to finish.
TeardownSeptember 12, 2026
Kirin and JSW Put PET Depolymerisation Inside a Twin-Screw Extruder
Chemical recycling of PET normally means a stirred tank and several hours. Kirin and JSW have moved the reaction into a continuous extruder. If the numbers hold, the interesting part is throughput per unit of capital.
TeardownSeptember 11, 2026
R3 Lithium in Covington: A $15M Series A Moving Into a $150M Building
R3 Lithium is taking over battery recycling capacity in Covington, Georgia that Ascend Elements spent far more to build. The asset is real. The question is whether the funding matches what refining lithium to spec actually costs.
TeardownSeptember 11, 2026
ReBioCycle's PLA Loop: What a Closed Loop Means When Nobody Publishes the Yield
An EU project says it has closed the loop on PLA — sorting, depolymerising and repolymerising bioplastic back to virgin-grade. The chemistry is sound. The numbers that decide whether it matters are missing.
TeardownSeptember 10, 2026
The Ocean Cleanup Says 50 Million Kilograms. Here Is What That Is a Fraction Of.
The removal figure is real and independently plausible. Set against annual plastic inflow to the ocean, it represents a small fraction of a single year — and the river interceptors are the part of the programme that actually scales.
TeardownSeptember 9, 2026
Syntetica Wants to Recycle Nylon. The Feedstock Barely Exists in Recoverable Form.
Chemical depolymerisation of nylon 6 back to caprolactam is proven chemistry with decades of industrial history. The constraint has always been that most nylon in the world is blended into textiles that cannot be separated.
TeardownSeptember 8, 2026
"Plasma and lemon juice" recycles batteries — the headline is doing a lot of work
Rice University reports ~95% recovery of critical metals using citric acid. The chemistry is genuinely clever. The framing around it — the lemon, the 10% figure, the record — does not survive a close read.
TeardownSeptember 7, 2026
The EU Right to Repair Covers Less Than the Headlines Suggest
The directive is a real obligation with real teeth. It also applies to a short list of product categories, and the biggest driver of e-waste volume — cheap devices with glued-in batteries — largely sits outside it.
TeardownSeptember 6, 2026
tozero's Acid-Free Battery Recycling: Strong Chemistry, Small Numbers
A pilot plant recovering lithium without mineral acid is a genuine contribution. The gap between pilot tonnage and the volume of batteries reaching end of life this decade is three orders of magnitude.
TeardownSeptember 5, 2026
374Water's PFAS Destruction Numbers Are Real. The Scale-Up Is Not Proven.
Supercritical water oxidation destroyed 42 PFAS compounds at 99.9993% in an independently reported Army Corps evaluation. Getting from that feedstock to raw municipal biosolids at 100 tonnes a day is a different engineering problem.
TeardownSeptember 3, 2026
Anferra Says Grinding Sludge Becomes Ferric Chloride and Hydrogen. Here Is What Is Missing.
A startup claims up to 90% iron recovery from steel grinding sludge, a saleable coagulant, hydrogen as a by-product and a negative carbon figure. Almost none of the process detail behind those numbers has been published.
TeardownSeptember 2, 2026
"Turning waste into graphene" — what the Tohoku experiment actually fed the reactor
A genuine advance: graphene grown at around 300°C instead of 900°C. The waste-derived framing attached to it in coverage describes a step the experiment did not perform.
TeardownSeptember 1, 2026
Biochar dominates the carbon-removal market. The durability is still modelled.
Biochar delivers the overwhelming majority of the world's issued carbon-removal credits because it is cheap and available now. The hundred-to-thousand-year permanence claim rests on inference, not observation.
TeardownAugust 31, 2026
"Beats commercial epoxy" — the ORNL adhesive result, and the numbers it withholds
The chemistry is credible and the strategy is smart. The headline performance figures have no absolute values, no named comparators, and no test standards attached. Here is what can and cannot be concluded.
TeardownAugust 30, 2026
Vaulted Deep buries organic waste a mile down and sells it as carbon removal
The injection technology is real, permitted, and has been running since 2008. The gap between what has been delivered and what has been contracted is roughly seventy-fold — and the credits rest on a counterfactual.
TeardownAugust 29, 2026
Vale says it will pull rare earths and gold from mining waste. Read the fine print.
Vale already produces 26.3 million tonnes of iron ore a year from material it once discarded. That is real. The rare-earth and gold announcement sitting on top of it has no element, no site, no method and no timeline.
TeardownAugust 28, 2026
99.9% pure CO2 from sewage sludge — reading Rhinoflux's proof-of-concept closely
A Kyoto University spinout says its aqueous chemical looping process turns wet sewage sludge into power at 2–4× biomass efficiency with near-pure CO2 capture. The target problem is real. The disclosed evidence is a feasibility study and a set of conditional verbs.
TeardownAugust 27, 2026
"Hundreds to thousands of times faster" — reading Rice's capture-and-destroy PFAS material
A copper–aluminium clay that traps PFAS and then burns them off is a genuinely good idea. The announcement reports partial destruction as elimination, a speed multiple with no baseline, and no cycle-life curve.
TeardownAugust 26, 2026
Two "direct recycling" startups just got $150M from DOE
Nth Cycle took $100M and Princeton NuEnergy $50M out of the DOE's $500M battery round. Both have operating plants and third-party numbers — which is more than most. Neither has solved the part a grant cannot buy: feedstock.
TeardownAugust 25, 2026
PVC waste becomes premium lubricant — breakthrough, or chemistry with a scale-up bill?
A Nature paper converts PVC into polyalphaolefin lubricants at 70 °C, using chlorine as a reaction handle rather than fighting it. The chemistry is strong. The claim that this solves PVC waste is doing a lot of unearned work.
TeardownAugust 24, 2026
"They charged for recycling, then dumped it with the trash"
Two doorbell videos show recycling carts going into a garbage truck. That is real evidence of a service failure — and not evidence that recycling is fake. The gap between those two statements is where the actual records live.
TeardownAugust 23, 2026
SiTration and BHP want to mine copper out of mine wastewater
A one-month pilot at a historic Arizona copper site aims to plate saleable copper out of legacy mine water using filtration plus electro-extraction. The bench numbers are strong. The scale numbers do not exist yet.
TeardownAugust 22, 2026
"Zero-emission" trash trucks arrive in Coconut Creek — what the claim leaves out
Six electric collection vehicles, billed as Florida's first fully electric residential fleet. The tailpipe number is real. It is also the only number the announcement gives you.
TeardownAugust 21, 2026
Denovia's "millions to billions" polyester framework
A molecular-recycling company and a major polyester producer have agreed to work together. The announcement contains a number measured in billions of pounds. It also contains no obligation to build a plant, process a tonne, or license anything.
TeardownAugust 20, 2026
EPS transport packaging leaves the “problematic” list — but is it circular?
On 19 August the U.S. Plastics Pact removed expanded-polystyrene transport packaging from its Problematic and Unnecessary Materials list, citing a recycling rate above 30%. That is a real result on a narrow slice of foam — and it is not permission to put your foam cup in the recycling bin.
TeardownAugust 19, 2026
Does BASF's tyre-derived wall paint close the loop?
End-of-life tyres go into a pyrolysis reactor; a certified share of recycled feedstock comes out attributed to a tin of interior paint. The chemistry is real, the audit is real, and the word doing the most work is "attributed".
TeardownAugust 18, 2026
HUI has a waste-to-SAF licence. It does not yet have a plant
On 17 August, Hydrogen Utopia International bought a $500,000 UK licence for plasma gasification aimed at sustainable aviation fuel. A licence is a real asset. It is also nine milestones short of a litre of jet fuel.
TeardownAugust 17, 2026
Cleaner water, different signature: the UV-and-ozone endocrine result
A study of a Tianjin plant found UV and ozonation knocked out estrogenic and thyroid activity — and pushed anti-androgenic activity above a study-derived trigger value. Important finding. Not a verdict on ozone.
TeardownAugust 16, 2026
MIT's recyclable stretch yarn: a design win, not yet a system
A polyethylene core-sheath yarn that stretches like PET-spandex and survives ten melt-and-respin cycles. The material result is real. The gap between a recyclable yarn and a recyclable garment is where almost all of the difficulty still sits.
TeardownAugust 15, 2026
rStream's Gillette Stadium sorter: strong pilot signal, incomplete proof of scale
A trailer-mounted AI sorter is processing post-event waste at Gillette Stadium, with a reported 99% accuracy across seven events. The deployment is real. The denominator, the tonnage and the end-market data are not published.
TeardownAugust 14, 2026
75% recycled does not equal 75% circular
SABIC has launched a carbon-fibre-reinforced polycarbonate with more than 75% post-consumer recycled content, made from water bottles, CDs, golf shafts and turbine blades. The materials engineering is real. The circularity claim is doing more work than the data supports.
TeardownAugust 13, 2026
Divert's 2.5-million-pound food-to-energy claim: circular loop or scoped case study?
Divert and US Cold Storage say 2.5 million pounds of unsold food became renewable natural gas and fertiliser in 15 months. The operating facts are solid. The carbon accounting behind them is not published.
TeardownAugust 12, 2026
ERI Vietnam: a good partner, an unproven loop
A 50/50 e-waste venture between a large US recycler and a Vietnamese environmental-services group has real operational strengths. What it does not yet have is a plant, a permit, a mass balance or a named downstream buyer.
TeardownAugust 11, 2026
Mexico's paper recycling headline, taken apart
54.1% recovered. 89.5% recycled content. Both figures are real, both come from the same 10 August study, and they measure different things. Separating them changes what the numbers say about household recycling.
TeardownAugust 10, 2026
Nine companies, one shared recycling line: Japan's flexible-packaging trial
A Ministry of the Environment-commissioned demonstration puts nine Japanese companies on a shared platform to delaminate and deink flexible packaging. It is a genuinely interesting infrastructure model. It is not yet proof of scale.
TeardownAugust 8, 2026
A KitKat wrapper made from soft plastics: closed loop, or mass-balance proof of concept?
Nine and a half tonnes of pyrolysis oil, five tonnes of resin, seven million wrappers. A real supply chain ran end to end - and almost none of the numbers that would prove it works were published.
TeardownAugust 7, 2026
PureCycle's commercial rebound has real proof points - the economics are still on trial
Q2 brought first branded resin deliveries, seven customer conversions and 173% revenue growth. It also brought a $142m net loss. A look at what advanced recycling has actually demonstrated, and what remains a forecast.
TeardownAugust 6, 2026
"Two Indonesian waste-to-energy projects secured" - award, milestone, or conditional headline?
SUS ENVIRONMENT says it was selected as preferred partner for two Indonesian WtE projects. The announcement contains no capacity, financing, schedule or emissions data - and a Conditional LOA is not a project.
TeardownAugust 5, 2026
Casablanca's $1.5B waste-to-energy bet: circular solution or combustion lock-in?
A 33.5-year exclusive treatment concession, three combustion lines and roughly 1 TWh a year. The contracts are signed. The financing, the emissions baseline and the recycling question are not.
TeardownAugust 5, 2026
Tire-to-fuels campus: breakthrough, or a press-release milestone?
Waste Energy says its Midland, Texas campus has entered final commissioning. That is a real construction milestone — and it is not the same thing as proven commercial scale.
TeardownAugust 1, 2026
Reading the BITS Pilani Wastewater Claim Line by Line
Six nines of disinfection, 90% organics removal, reusable water and biogas — announced without an energy balance, a cost figure, or a recovery yield. A teardown of what the numbers do and do not say.
TeardownJuly 31, 2026
China Deletes the Second-Life Battery Rulebook
On 30 July, MIIT abolished the announcement-management system for cascade use of retired EV batteries. Not a ban on reuse — the removal of the official channel that made reuse financeable.