There’s a new player in the field of addressing the severe global plastic waste problem, estimated at 400 million tons per year and growing.

Rehovot-based startup Plastic Back is establishing a pilot plant to do reverse engineering magic: breaking down any type of plastic waste into its original oil, wax and chemical components.

This plastic-derived feedstock will be returned to the petrochemical industry from which it came, to be upcycled into new products such as alternative plastics and fuel.

“We close the loop between the waste handlers that receive and handle millions of tons of plastic waste, and the petrochemical industry, which is heavily dependent on virgin feedstock,” CEO Tal Binder Cohen tells ISRAEL21c.

Plastic Back will buy any plastic waste that recycling facilities are not able to treat and would otherwise send to landfills or overseas. In this way, the technology can help waste handlers create profit as an alternative to landfill.

“There’s also an option for big brands to take part in collection of postconsumer plastic waste that we will collect and help them extend their producer responsibility targets,” says Cohen.

Plastic Back’s unique chemical process was developed by Prof. Yoel Sasson and Uri Stoin at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Casali Institute for Applied Chemistry, to reduce environmentally detrimental landfilling and minimize the need for virgin petroleum feedstock.

The technology was licensed to Plastic Back in 2020 through Yissum, the university’s tech-transfer company.