Tech · MIT Technology Review
Last year, the team landed a $6.5 million seed round and built a 50-liter pilot plant at The Engine
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Peña Feliz’s passion for problem-solving dates back to his childhood in the Dominican Republic.
Key facts
- Last year, the team raised a $6.5 million seed round and built a 50-liter pilot plant at The Engine, MIT’s “tough tech” incubator that turns waste into PET pellets
- His 10-year goal is to be the No. 1 company producing recycled plastics
- Stwart Peña Feliz, MBA ’23, probably thinks more about your trash than you
- This approach consumes 80% less energy than traditional recycling methods, reducing recycling’s carbon footprint and making it more financially feasible, Peña Feliz says
Summary
Stwart Peña Feliz, MBA ’23, probably thinks more about your trash than you do. There, in a class called Climate and Energy Ventures, he met Jan-Georg Rosenboom, a postdoc who had developed a chemical engineering process that seemed to offer that. Their company, MacroCycle Technologies, transforms plastic and polyester waste into a usable plastic called “virgin-grade” polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Last year, the team raised a $6.5 million seed round and built a 50-liter pilot plant at The Engine, MIT’s “tough tech” incubator that turns waste into PET pellets. Peña Feliz’s passion for problem-solving dates back to his childhood in the Dominican Republic. (When he was six, he woke up to one of many blackouts and, seeing his mother’s exasperated look, told her, “Don’t worry, Mama—one day I’ll fix our power issues.”) But MIT taught him about the importance of collaboration and cross-pollination as he worked alongside students from engineering and government.