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.
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Explainers, teardowns, and myth-busting on waste management systems and green engineering.
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Teardown posts
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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.