MINNEAPOLIS, July 22, 2024 — Today, Eureka Recycling, a nonprofit, mission-based independent regional materials recovery facility (MRF) based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, announced a multi-million-dollar financing round led by Closed Loop Partners’ catalytic private credit arm, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, alongside American Beverage and The Recycling Partnership.

“This loan funds key upgrades that bolster our resilience to changes in the recycling material stream and shifts in policy across the U.S.,” said Miriam Holsinger, co-president and COO of Eureka Recycling. “Building on our long-term commitment to quality material, traceability in markets and support for our local community, this new equipment and technology improves our ability to effectively sort recyclables in Minnesota and also prevents environmental deterioration from resource extraction, reduces landfill disposal, and generates economic benefits across the municipalities that we support.”

Since its founding, Eureka has been a best-in-class recycling operator, demonstrating the impact and importance of regional, independent recovery facilities in keeping materials in circulation. Eureka Recycling has maintained strong local support in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and continues to be a key player in the regional recycling market, processing more than 100,000 tons of materials per year.

The over $10 million loan from Closed Loop Partners’ catalytic capital group includes $3 million from American Beverage and the Minnesota Beverage Association. Alongside the loan, The Recycling Partnership provided a grant to support this project. With key infrastructure upgrades, Eureka Recycling can collect, process and return more valuable materials to supply chains and advance a circular economy in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. This will not only support a cleaner community, but also continue to bring revenue to cities and other customers served by the facility and support local jobs.

“We see immense opportunity to support independent recycling operators that are building the necessary infrastructure for a circular economy in the U.S.,” said Jennifer Louie, Managing Director and Head of the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group at Closed Loop Partners. “Eureka’s work has consistently aligned with Closed Loop Partners’ broader mission to advance the circular economy since our partnership began with them nearly a decade ago. This is Closed Loop Partners’ fourth loan to Eureka Recycling in nearly a decade, supporting the MRF in maintaining its leading position in the region. Closed Loop Partners’ Infrastructure Group, across its Infrastructure, Beverage, Circular Plastics and Local Recycling strategies, will continue to deploy capital into private companies, projects and other recycling-focused nonprofits, such as Eureka Recycling.”

Financing is provided as market dynamics, policy shifts and packaging trends change the composition of materials processed by recycling facilities. Investment in regional recycling infrastructure is necessary to keep up with changing material flows and growing demand for high-quality recycled material. The capital will support additional optical sorters to decrease contamination and increase the quality of recovered materials that can be made into new materials, including mixed paper and old corrugated cardboard, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), aluminum, polyethylene and polypropylene. Once the upgrade is completed in 2025, the new machines are estimated to increase the annual collection of PET and aluminum by 222 and 248 tons, respectively.

“One of our industry’s highest priorities is circularity for our valuable bottles and cans,” said American Beverage President and CEO Kevin Keane. “They are made to be remade, and this investment will help make sure more of this valuable material can once again become a new bottle or can. America’s beverage companies are excited to support these important upgrades for the one million residents Eureka serves.”

“Delivering on the promise of a circular economy requires that we build a better recycling system, and that’s exactly what our support to Eureka Recycling is delivering,” said Cody Marshall, Chief Community Strategy Officer at The Recycling Partnership. “By delivering grant funding and forging new partnerships we are providing critical infrastructure that will increase Minnesota’s 45% recycling rate and expand recycling access across the region. That’s good for the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul and for all of us.”

This is the fourth investment from the unique public-private partnership between Closed Loop Partners’ Infrastructure Group, American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back and The Recycling Partnership. The loans, grants and other investments have strengthened infrastructure nationwide to recover materials at their end-of-life, increasing the volume of quality recycled material to meet growing demand for these materials and commitments toward a waste-free world.

About Eureka Recycling
Eureka Recycling is a nonprofit Zero Waste organization and mission-based recycler in Minneapolis, MN. Through education, policy and advocacy work, and operational excellence, Eureka is dedicated to demonstrating that waste is preventable. Eureka provides recycling collection services to more than 100k Twin Cities metro residents, and at its Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), Eureka sorts approximately 100k tons of single-stream recycling annually, serving residents in the Twin Cities, greater Minnesota, and eastern Wisconsin. Committed to Zero Waste and systemic change, Eureka is a founding member of the Alliance of Mission-Based Recyclers (AMBR) which amplifies its impact, advocating for policies that reduce resource extraction, combat climate change, and support local communities.

About Closed Loop Partners
Closed Loop Partners is at the forefront of building the circular economy. The company is comprised of three key business segments: its investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management, managing venture capital, buyout private equity and catalytic private credit investment strategies; its innovation center, the Center for the Circular Economy; and its operating group, Closed Loop Builders.

The firm’s catalytic private credit arm, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, provides a mix of flexible financing solutions to support a range of circular economy projects, companies, infrastructure and enabling technologies. The Infrastructure Group deploys catalytic capital, which seeks to accelerate and de-risk the development of high-impact projects and companies. Areas of strategic investment include providing below-market rate loans to finance circular infrastructure, providing catalytic financing to increase recovery of hard-to-recycle plastics and PET bottles, and financing and deploying small-scale, modular materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to increase recycling in communities with no or limited access to recycling.

Closed Loop Partners is based in New York City and is a registered B Corp. Learn more at closedlooppartners.com.

About American Beverage
American Beverage is the national trade organization representing the broad spectrum of companies that manufacture and distribute non-alcoholic beverages in the United States. The Every Bottle Back initiative is an integrated and comprehensive initiative by The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo designed to improve plastics circularity.

Learn more at www.EveryBottleBack.org.

About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is a purpose-driven organization committed to building a better recycling system, one that delivers the economic and environmental benefits our communities and the hundreds of thousands of people who work throughout the recycling industry deserve. The Recycling Partnership’s team of experts, practitioners, and thought leaders with real-world experience works with its partners to create meaningful change across the recycling system and assist communities, companies, and policymakers in enacting such change. The Recycling Partnership uses its one-of-its-kind National Recycling Database that reaches more than 9,000 U.S. recycling programs and develops practical and innovative resources to address critical gaps in the recycling system. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.

July 9, 2024, Petaluma, CA –– Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Peet’s Coffee, Yum! Brands and other global and local brands and restaurants are partnering in The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project from the NextGen Consortium, led by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, to activate an unprecedented collaboration to drive reuse. Starting August 5, more than 30 restaurants in the City of Petaluma, CA, will swap their single-use cups for to-go reusable cups to all customers at no cost, and widespread return points will also be available across the city. This program marks a significant milestone for reuse, as the first initiative of its kind that makes reusable to-go cups the default option across multiple restaurants in a U.S. city, with the opportunity to drive more customers to reuse and displace hundreds of thousands of single-use cups.

The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is focused on supporting customers to create return habits, a key factor to the success of reuse. The city-wide initiative is a critical step forward to catalyze and scale reuse systems, building on half a decade of work by the NextGen Consortium––a collaboration managed by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, in partnership with many global foodservice brands.

The mix of large national chains, local independent restaurants, convenience stores, community hubs and public locations makes this initiative distinctly powerful in shaping consumer habits and cultural norms. More than 30 restaurants in the City of Petaluma will be participating in the initiative, including Starbucks and licensed Starbucks cafés in Target and in Safeway, owned by Albertsons Companies; Peet’s Coffee; KFC and The Habit Burger Grill, owned by Yum!; Dunkin’; as well as many local cafés and restaurants. The initiative was made possible through extensive public-private collaboration, with support and engagement from the City of Petaluma, Zero Waste Sonoma, Recology, community groups and local businesses.

“It takes an entire community to build the future of reuse that we want to see,” says Michael Kobori, Starbucks chief sustainability officer. “Our environmental promise is core to our business and that’s why we’re working toward a future vision of every Starbucks beverage served in a reusable cup. Together with fellow foodservice brands, local stores and community stakeholders, we’re leading this initiative to help further unlock behavior change toward reusables, making it easy for our customers, and any customer, to choose to reuse and reduce waste.”

Across the U.S., 50 billion single-use cups are purchased and disposed of each year. Most of these cups are used out of a restaurant and disposed of at home, work or school, with an average lifespan of less than one hour before going to waste, according to the Center for the Circular Economy’s research. While reuse is growing quickly, use of personal cups and existing takeaway reusable cup systems still face low adoption or low returns. For reuse to scale responsibly, it’s imperative to create an easy and enjoyable consumer experience that makes it easy for customers to remember to bring their own containers or to return one that was given to them.

“To create a world without packaging waste, we need to ensure that food packaging reuse systems are scaled in a way that creates a positive environmental impact––meeting the current needs of people while driving a cultural shift toward reuse,” says Kate Daly, Managing Director and Head of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “By testing reuse across an entire city in partnership with key stakeholders from the community and industry, we can scale reuse collaboratively through thoughtful experimentation, building a future where reuse is the norm.”

The City of Petaluma, CA, located in the northern Bay Area, was selected for the initiative for many reasons. In this region, businesses and consumers are receptive to adopting reuse, given the policy environment promoting the phase-out of non-recyclable single-use packaging. The city also participated in a returnable cup test at participating Starbucks locations in 2023. The size and dense layout of downtown Petaluma, with its tight cluster of restaurants and local shops within walking distance, and proximity to suburban and rural areas, creates the right conditions for testing a reuse system for to-go cups. Collaboration with local stakeholders has helped adapt the initiative to local policy and infrastructure, identify optimal return points across the city and engage the broader community.

“The City of Petaluma is laying the groundwork to make cup reuse not only an option, but the default,” says Kevin McDonnell, the Mayor of the City of Petaluma. “We have an amazing, engaged community, and we look forward to assisting the success of this program, alongside our local restaurants and participating global brands that service our community.”

“Imagine a neighborhood where all to-go cups are reusable, and returning these cups required no extra steps. By making reusable cups as convenient and accessible as single use, we can offer an alternative for residents when they forget to bring their own cups with them,” says Leslie Lukacs, Executive Director of Zero Waste Sonoma. “Universal accessibility creates the foundation for a cultural shift towards reuse.”

The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project will install more than 60 cup return bins across Petaluma. After use and return, the reusable cups will be collected, washed and recirculated for future uses by participating businesses and customers. Muuse, a winner of the 2018 NextGen Cup innovation challenge, was selected by the NextGen Consortium to manage all servicing and reverse logistics for the initiative.

“Transitioning to returnable packaging systems is a critical part of reducing single-use packaging waste, and we need to focus on supporting the operations behind it. These systems must be thoughtfully and responsibly implemented to ensure we are minimizing our impact of creating more waste in the process,” says Brittany Gamez, COO & Co-Founder of Muuse. “It is through initiatives like this that we can identify what is needed to operationalize shared systems at this level and inform how reuse is implemented at scale.” 

The initiative, which runs until November, will collect baseline data that measures customer participation and the environmental impact of offering reusables as the default choice for customers, testing whether the model is operationally viable for scale. Data from the initiative can be leveraged by businesses and regulators to support them as they design new reuse systems and draft well-informed packaging regulations.

This is another key step in the NextGen Consortium’s longstanding work to advance reuse. Since 2018, the NextGen Consortium, its brand partners and the Center for the Circular Economy ecosystem have been at the forefront of the reuse movement. In 2019 and 2020, the NextGen Consortium launched groundbreaking trials in the San Francisco Bay Area to understand how reusable cup programs might operate simultaneously across multiple restaurants, leading to a foundational reuse report. Starbucks, a NextGen founding partner, has launched cup share programs in over 25 markets globally, including saturation trials in California. They also recently became the first national coffee retailer to accept reusable cups for drive-thru and mobile orders, making significant progress to incentivize customers to bring their own cups to stores. The work to advance reuse also extends beyond the cup. In 2023, the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag, also managed by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, wrapped its largest returnable bag program, alongside its largest bring your own bag program, in partnership with CVS Health, Target and other leading retailers.

Moving forward, the NextGen Consortium will continue its work and collaboration with stakeholders from across the reuse value chain, from innovators and activists to global brands and policymakers, to effectively scale reuse systems that are better for the environment.

About the NextGen Consortium

The NextGen Consortium is a multi-year consortium that addresses single-use foodservice packaging waste by advancing the design, commercialization and recovery of foodservice packaging alternatives. The NextGen Consortium is managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy. Starbucks and McDonald’s are the founding partners of the Consortium, with The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo as sector lead partners. Peet’s Coffee, with its parent company JDE Peet’s, Wendy’s, Yum! Brands, Delta Air Lines and Toast are supporting partners. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is the environmental advisory partner. Learn more at www.nextgenconsortium.com.

About the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners

The Center for the Circular Economy is the innovation arm of Closed Loop Partners, a firm at the forefront of building the circular economy. The Center executes research and analytics, unites organizations to tackle complex material challenges and implements systemic change that advances the circular economy. The Center for the Circular Economy’s expertise spans circularity across the full lifecycle of materials, connecting upstream innovation to downstream recovery infrastructure and end markets. Learn more about the Center for the Circular Economy at closedlooppartners.com/the-center/

The Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners shares insights on how businesses can align with customers in reducing cup waste, drawing on lessons learned from 90 Bring-Your-Own-Cup (BYOC) initiatives in cafés and restaurants across the U.S.

Read more to learn about our insights.

Download Our Insights Here

For 10 years, our thesis at Closed Loop Partners has remained consistent. The linear economy of materials management––characterized by extraction, single use and disposal––is inefficient. A more effective system exists: a circular economy, whereby people and businesses are custodians of materials over perpetual life cycles. The circular economy creates new value––a fundamental shift in the way society has managed resources over the last 75 years. But to sustain itself well into the future, circularity must be more profitable than the linear system. 

Closed Loop Partners saw the economic, environmental and social opportunity in circularity. It was one of the first investment firms to bring together incumbent and emerging players to collectively accelerate this transition. As the firm enters its tenth year, cross-industry stakeholder participation continues to prove its effectiveness in advancing systemic change. Today, markets are experiencing the momentum driving the acceptance and understanding of circularity. Tailwinds including technological innovation, consumer sentiment, regulatory incentives, net-zero commitments and the need for supply chain resiliency propel the current transition. As the circular economy disrupts the status quo, it also presents investment opportunities, inviting collaboration across unexpected corporate, financial, government and community stakeholders.  

The opportunity of the circular economy goes far beyond recycling. It represents full systems change, revamping each point in the supply chain: product design, logistics technology, collection capacity reprocessing and remanufacturing. Industries from consumer package goods (CPG) to food & agriculture, retail, technology, energy and the built environment stand to benefit from more efficient management of materials such as plastics & packaging, organics, textiles and critical minerals. To advance systems change across the product life cycle of different materials, different forms of financing are needed.  

Today, Closed Loop Partners manages three primary investment strategies: early-stage venture capital, buyout private equity and private credit and catalytic capital. But 10 years ago, our work started with catalytic capital, to amplify the opportunity of circularity and to crowd traditional investment into the capital gap for the transition. 10 years later, it continues to be a critical piece of the puzzle.  

Alongside traditional equity and debt solutions, catalytic capital––defined as flexible financing that prioritizes specific outcomes over prevailing market returns––can send a market signal to direct capital flows. This accelerates the uptake and scale of private businesses, municipal projects and infrastructure that are key contributors to durable, circular operations. For a decade, our catalytic investments, provided by Closed Loop Partners’s Infrastructure Group, have been connecting profit incentives with urgent environmental and social impact outcomes. Backed by global retailers, consumer package goods, technology and material science corporations and foundations such as Walmart, Unilever, Starbucks, PepsiCo, P&G, Microsoft, Keurig Dr Pepper, Kenvue (formerly Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health), Danone, Colgate-Palmolive, The Coca-Cola Company, BlueTriton, Amazon and 3M, these private credit and hybrid investments support innovations, private businesses, municipal projects, equipment upgrades and facility development.  

By deploying below-market rate and more flexible financing than would otherwise be available, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group aims to:   

• attract follow-on capital from traditional capital markets  
• increase the quality and quantity of recycled material kept in the system 
• mitigate greenhouse gas emissions 
• create more jobs across communities  
• advance corporate strategic goals of integrating circularity into their operations.  

As early champions of catalytic capital, Closed Loop Partners has worked with an array of municipalities and private companies to accelerate the transition to a profitable and more sustainable system. 10 years in, we have seen the ability of this financing to catalyze the market, in more ways than one.  

• Catalyzing More Capital: rPlanet Earth was founded to provide high-quality recycled PET (rPET) packaging and containers to food, beverage and other CPG companies. Operating under a single roof, it is the world’s first completely vertically integrated manufacturer of multiple high rPET content products (up to 100% rPET), creating a much-needed market for the PET packaging collected from curbside recycling programs across California. rPlanet Earth is committed to providing the lowest carbon footprint packaging and products in the marketplace. In 2018, Closed Loop Partners identified the opportunity to bridge a near term capital gap and send a market signal. Our catalytic group provided a $1.5 million loan. Grants and loans from California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), CAEATFA and private debt financing sources also provided alternative financing solutions. Also, one of the four largest banks in the U.S. provided a multi-million-dollar loan to finance the construction of their first facility. Together, this capital, along with substantial equity investments from two prominent funds financed rPlanet Earth’s first plant in Vernon, CA. 

• Catalyzing Growth: By 2019, Phoenix, Arizona had risen to the fifth largest metropolis in the United States, resulting in a higher volume of recyclable materials. With a $3 million investment from the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, the City of Phoenix upgraded its North Gateway materials recovery facility (MRF) to enable greater diversion of plastics from landfill and to improve the quality of baled paper produced. The upgrade also helped to increase the overall tonnage of residential recycled materials processed and recovered by the City’s MRF by over 25% within the two years after investment. The city has established a strong reputation for its commitment to the circular economy and its zero waste plan.  
  

• Catalyzing Scale: In 2022, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group invested in Greyparrot, a leading AI waste analytics platform for the circular economy. Their AI Waste Recognition System is deployed on moving conveyor belts in sorting facilities globally, with the mission of using AI to significantly improve recycling efficiency and increase resource recovery. Supported by funding, Greyparrot has grown to now identify over 25 billion waste objects each year, with 100+ of its Greyparrot Analyzer Units spread across more than 17 countries, and is working with three of the top eight global waste management companies.  

Our future requires an increase in material circularity and urgent climate action. Our work at Closed Loop Partners advances efficient materials management and optimized supply chains in a more profitable, more resilient circular system. There is significant opportunity to transition the over $100 trillion global economy from the incumbent linear economic system characterized by wasted resources and profit leakage, to a more efficient circular economy. The Circularity Gap Report estimates that as of 2023, just 7% of the global economy was circular. There is over 90% of the economy yet to transition across materials including paper, metal, plastic, organics, water, critical minerals and carbon itself, and across industries from CPG to fashion, from technology to transportation, energy to real estate.   

The transition to circularity presents trillions of dollars of opportunity. Catalytic capital can spark capital flows and accelerate scale, making the innovations, businesses, municipal projects and infrastructure that are critical to a profitable circular system move faster than they otherwise would. For potential collaborators––corporate, foundation, municipal finance or other institutional capital––that would like to learn more, please get in touch with our team. Join us in accelerating the transition to a market-driven circular economy and, in doing so, build a climate-positive future. 

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*This publication is for informational purposes only, and nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any investment vehicle managed by Closed Loop Partners or any company in which Closed Loop Partners or its affiliates have invested. An offer or solicitation will be made only through a final private placement memorandum, subscription agreement and other related documents with respect to a particular investment opportunity and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such documents, including the qualifications necessary to become an investor. Information provided reflects Closed Loop Partners’ views as of a particular time and are subject to change without notice. You should obtain relevant and specific professional advice before making any investment decision. 

May 8, 2024, New York, NY – In response to the rise of food waste legislation and increasing commitments to zero waste and climate action, the Composting Consortium, managed by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, releases The Compost Policy Toolkit. This comprehensive toolkit equips policymakers, regulators, composters, brands and retailers with the insights and tools needed to navigate a complex policy landscape around compostable packaging and keep food out of landfill by diverting food scraps towards composting infrastructure. The Toolkit covers three pressing topics in policy today, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), labeling laws and compost end market expansion.

The Composting Consortium, a multi-year collaborative effort focused on advancing circular solutions for food-contact compostable packaging and scaling composting infrastructure, emphasizes the importance of policy in addressing organic waste and advancing circular outcomes, alongside design innovation and recovery infrastructure.

The Compost Policy Toolkit is released at a critical juncture. In the U.S. today, approximately 24% of landfill is food waste, emitting roughly 55 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions—and 58% of fugitive methane emissions—per year. Reducing organic waste is recognized as a critical path to achieving critical climate targets. Compostable packaging is also increasingly seen as a mechanism to divert food scraps away from landfill, and the U.S. composting system is slowly transitioning, with more composting facilities now accepting food scraps and some forms of food-contact compostable packaging. To support this transition, policies must help ensure that new materials––such as compostable packaging––align with available infrastructure and markets, as well as incentivize proactive infrastructure development to ensure that these materials are responsibly processed.

U.S. policy on compostable packaging and organics is at a key inflection point. As awareness grows of the environmental impact of organic waste, more landfill bans and materials recovery policies are being implemented to advance packaging and food recovery. To date, ten U.S. states and several major cities have established organics bans. Four U.S. states—California, Colorado, Maine and Oregon—have adopted EPR laws for packaging, and several others have established study bills to evaluate the opportunity for EPR. There is also increasing attention on the importance of soil health, as seen by the proliferation of healthy soils policies and programs across the U.S. As momentum around policy accelerates, there is critical need to develop robust EPR laws that include food-contact compostable packaging, clear labeling laws that help customers and composters identify compostable packaging, and policies that expand the procurement and application of compost across the country.

The Composting Consortium’s toolkit includes insights on a range of policies that are critical to supporting the composting industry in the U.S. It provides policymakers, regulators, composters, brands and retailers with actionable insights on:

• Optimizing EPR for Composting: This brief explores the role of EPR in building composting infrastructure. It emphasizes the importance of conducting thorough needs assessments that account for composting infrastructure and certified food-contact compostable packaging.
• Clear and Consistent Labeling for Compostable Packaging: This brief shares consumer survey findings, highlighting the need for standardized labeling on compostable packaging to avoid confusion with non-compostable packaging, maximize consumer participation in organics diversion programs and support composters in accepting food-contact compostable packaging at their facilities.
• Policy Considerations for Supporting Compost Procurement: This brief explores strategies for promoting the purchase and use of finished compost to enhance our soils, including model procurement policies, compost application incentives and compost education programs.

The Compost Policy Toolkit is an outcome of the Composting Consortium’s in-depth research on policy, made possible by collaboration with key stakeholders across the composting industry. By outlining these key areas and offering practical recommendations, the toolkit aims to equip policymakers and regulators with the insights and best practices needed to navigate the complexities of compostable packaging and infrastructure development.

“Policy plays an important role in keeping resources in circulation whether for reuse systems or in support of robust recycling and composting infrastructure,” said Kate Daly, Managing Director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “We believe this Policy Toolkit is a valuable resource that will help accelerate the responsible growth of composting infrastructure and unlock the environmental and economic benefits of a circular organics economy.”

The Compost Policy Toolkit is available for download here.

About the Composting Consortium

The Composting Consortium is a multi-year collaboration to pilot industry-wide solutions and build a roadmap for investment in technologies and infrastructure that enable the recovery of compostable food packaging and food scraps. The Composting Consortium is managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy. Learn more about the Consortium at https://www.closedlooppartners.com/composting-consortium/

About the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners

The Center for the Circular Economy is the innovation arm of Closed Loop Partners, a firm at the forefront of building the circular economy. The Center executes research and analytics, unites organizations to tackle complex material challenges and implements systemic change that advances the circular economy. The Center for the Circular Economy’s expertise spans circularity across the full lifecycle of materials, connecting upstream innovation to downstream recovery infrastructure and end markets. Learn more about the Center for the Circular Economy at https://www.closedlooppartners.com/the-center/

Microbes are behind well-known industrial processes: from yeast for leavening bread or producing ethanol to acetic acid bacteria for vinegar production. These processes typically start with some sort of carbohydrate or sugar-rich feedstock, in which the living organisms are added and allowed to eat their way through the feedstock in a process known as fermentation. Closed Loop Partners has long been exploring the prospect of using microbes to advance circularity, such as creating energy from food waste––as seen through the work of one of our earliest portfolio companies, HomeBiogas. Today, we are seeing even more opportunities for microbes to change the way we produce, and this drove our investment in Capra Biosciences.

Capra sits at the confluence of synthetic biology, resilient supply chains for national defensive strategies, and sustainable consumption. Capra leverages a unique microbe to consume organic feedstocks (like food waste) and convert those materials into high value molecules that are direct replacements for petrochemical-derived products. This can range from molecules used in cosmetics to high value lubricants.

In taking these waste feedstocks and upcycling them into some of the highest value end products, Capra demonstrates how synthetic biology sits at the heart of the circular economy:

• Reducing reliance on extractive industries: Capra is displacing petroleum-based feedstocks for hydrophobic chemicals. This eliminates the need for extractive mining processes and instead leverages waste feedstock to produce high value commodity products at a price point that is competitive with market incumbents.
• Leveraging waste feedstock: Synthetic biology is often reliant on sugars as feedstock for the microbes, which come from net new agricultural production. Capra is starting with food-waste derivatives that are widely available. By giving these materials another life, Capra diverts food waste from landfill and offers a more sustainable product.
• Process-flow material recovery: An ideal system is one in which the microbes and solvents can be recovered after one pass through the system, leaving a close to zero waste process and positively impacting unit economics.
• Distributed, on-site generation: Capra’s technology design allows for continuous flow and modularity, meaning they can convert waste carbon sources such as food waste into high value chemistries onsite. By keeping production and distribution local and integrated, their process helps reduce emissions associated with transportation.

Given the promise of synthetic biology, we are proud to be backing the expert team of Liz Onderko, PhD and Andrew Magyar, PhD, co-founders of Capra Biosciences. We have compiled a diverse syndicate of support, including SOSV, GS Futures, First Bight, E14 and others to support Capra in their work to make high performance and affordable renewable chemicals for the circular economy. Learn more about Capra Biosciences here or reach out to [email protected].

About Capra

Closed Loop Partners is at the forefront of building the circular economy. The company is comprised of three key business segments: its investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management; its innovation center, the Center for the Circular Economy; and its operating group, Circular Services. Closed Loop Capital Management manages venture capital, buyout private equity and catalytic private credit investment strategies. The firm’s venture capital group, the Closed Loop Ventures Group, has been investing early-stage capital into companies developing breakthrough solutions for the circular economy since 2016. The Closed Loop Ventures Group’s portfolio includes companies developing leading innovations in material science, robotics, agritech, sustainable consumer products and advanced technologies that further the circular economy. Closed Loop Partners is based in New York City and is a registered B Corp. Closedlooppartners.com.

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This publication is for informational purposes only, and nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any investment vehicle managed by Closed Loop Partners or any company in which Closed Loop Partners or its affiliates have invested. An offer or solicitation will be made only through a final private placement memorandum, subscription agreement and other related documents with respect to a particular investment opportunity and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such documents, including the qualifications necessary to become an investor. Information provided reflects Closed Loop Partners’ views as of a particular time and are subject to change without notice. You should obtain relevant and specific professional advice before making any investment decision. 

April 17, 2024, New York, NY –– Circular economy-focused investment firm Closed Loop Partners announces the closing of a catalytic loan to Olyns, a technology and media company that engineered a new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solution to improve the collection, sortation and recycling of consumer packaging. The financing from Closed Loop Partners’ private credit arm, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, will support the manufacturing of Olyns’ Cubes––AI-powered reverse vending machines that collect and sort packaging materials, including food-grade plastic, glass and aluminum––and accelerate the expansion of Olyns’ consumer recycling infrastructure across the U.S.

Founded in 2019 in Silicon Valley, Olyns is increasing access to consumer recycling with an innovative technology solution that makes material collection efficient and scalable through a self-sustaining business model. Olyns’ AI-powered Cubes are a new take on reverse vending machines, where people deposit eligible beverage containers and receive cash deposits back electronically. Not only do Olyns’ Cubes provide rewards to incentivize participation and include a screen that can display media, but their machines also leverage AI, enabling them to rapidly learn to recognize new deposited products sold by brands at retailers across the country, as well as track deposit rates by product and brand. This is especially relevant amidst growing policy around materials recovery, such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Olyns currently partners with top retailers and consumer goods brands to locate their Cubes in high traffic locations such as major supermarkets, big box stores, pharmacies and gas stations, ensuring recycling is convenient and advertisements are effective. By operating as both a consumer recycling network and digital out-of-home media network, Olyns is changing the economics of recycling.

Source: Olyns

Olyns not only has the opportunity to collect millions of containers per year, but also to improve material sortation to maintain the quality of the recycled materials. By using AI to identify and sort containers at the point of deposit into separate bins, Olyns minimizes the co-mingling and contamination common to traditional recycling. This results in industry-leading material recovery rates and bale quality, ensuring that more containers deposited can be made into new containers. The vast majority of the rPET collected in Olyns’ Cubes is food-grade and can be used as material for recycled bottles.

“The material quality of aluminum, PET and glass beverage containers collected by the Olyns reverse vending machines is some of the highest quality material Ming’s facilities receive from our customers,” said Jeff Donlevy, General Manager of Ming’s Recycling Corp, a current processor of Olyns CRV material. “Mixed plastic material collected through co-mingled programs often can’t achieve the same quality standards, and significant amounts end up in landfill. Olyns’ technology minimizes co-mingling, and consistently achieves the food-grade quality material that plastic reclaimers want.”

As the Olyns network scales, it helps unlock a new supply of recyclable post-consumer plastic and aluminum, helping corporations meet their sustainable packaging goals and reducing their dependence on virgin plastic from non-renewable sources. As demand for food-grade rPET is anticipated to outpace supply by about three times by 2030, scaling solutions that can bolster supply of high-quality recycled content is critical. By expanding recycling access to more locations, Olyns’ Cube network collects and processes a growing portion of the estimated 4.6 billion pounds of unrecycled PET that would otherwise end up in landfill every year, closing the loop on food-grade PET and reducing carbon emissions that would result from the production of virgin plastic.

“Greater consumer access to recycling, more efficient material sortation and economically sound recycling systems are critical to recovering high-quality materials,” says Philip Stanger, Co-Founder and CEO of Olyns. “Since we installed our first Cube in California in 2020, user growth has been phenomenal, proving that when people have easy access to recycling, impact is magnified. While we started with collecting PET plastic, aluminum and glass beverage containers, we are looking to build our AI capacity to potentially expand collection for hard-to-recycle materials, such as films and flexibles. Closed Loop Partners’ financing will help us build the circular economy infrastructure that helps make recycling possible for more materials, and accessible to more communities.”

The Closed Loop Infrastructure Group has been providing flexible loans to projects that build out circular economy infrastructure and innovation in the United States for nearly 10 years. This includes robust recycling infrastructure equipment, as well as rapidly growing companies poised to scale circular solutions. The loan to Olyns underscores the potential of new innovative solutions and creates a significant opportunity to increase material collection in underserved areas, including states without deposit return schemes such as bottle bills. By producing a source-separated, clean stream of materials, Olyns also helps bolster the market for high-quality recyclables, looping more material back into the same or similar products.

“We see immense opportunity to finance rapidly growing technology innovations, alongside large-scale recycling infrastructure, to improve materials sortation and accelerate the circular economy in the U.S. Expanding the types of financing available in the market can help meet the distinct needs of innovators developing new circular solutions. Catalytic capital is a powerful tool, providing the foundation needed to accelerate further growth,” says Jennifer Louie, Managing Director and Head of the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group at Closed Loop Partners. “Closed Loop Partners’ Infrastructure Group is proud to finance scalable and replicable solutions and provide access to the Closed Loop Partners ecosystem to support their growth. We are thrilled to partner with Olyns, as they disrupt material collection and advance more circular supply chains for valuable packaging materials.”

Moving forward, Olyns looks to further scale its solution, partnering with key brands to expand to new locations and increase collection and recovery of more materials, reducing reliance on natural resource extraction and driving forward a circular economy.

If you are interested in learning more about Olyns, visit here. If you are interested in applying for funding from the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, learn more about Closed Loop Partners’ catalytic capital strategy here.

About Olyns

Olyns innovates at the nexus of retail media and recycling, connecting people to recycling and brands to customers. Founded in 2019 in Silicon Valley, Olyns’ pioneering ecosystem includes the Cube, an AI-powered reverse vending machine that provides self-serve beverage container recycling to consumers and includes a 55-inch screen to display advertising. Olyns partners with top retailers and consumer goods brands to locate Cubes in high traffic locations such as major supermarkets, big box stores, pharmacies, and gas stations, ensuring recycling is convenient and advertisements are effective. By operating as both a consumer recycling network and digital out-of-home media network, Olyns is changing the economics of recycling. With its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and sort containers at point of deposit, Olyns minimizes the co-mingling and contamination common to traditional recycling and unlocks a valuable new supply of food-grade recycled plastic.

Olyns is on a mission to inspire people to recycle, stop the depletion of the earth’s resources, and accelerate the shift to a circular packaging economy. Learn more at www.olyns.com

About Closed Loop Partners

Closed Loop Partners is at the forefront of building the circular economy. The company is comprised of three key business segments: its investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management, managing venture capital, buyout private equity and catalytic private credit investment strategies; its innovation center, the Center for the Circular Economy; and its operating group, Closed Loop Builders.

The firm’s catalytic private credit arm, the Closed Loop Infrastructure Group, provides a mix of flexible financing solutions to support a range of circular economy projects, companies, infrastructure and enabling technologies. The Infrastructure Group deploys catalytic capital, which seeks to accelerate and de-risk the development of high-impact projects and companies. Areas of strategic investment include: providing below-market rate loans to finance circular infrastructure, providing catalytic financing to increase recovery of hard-to-recycle plastics and PET bottles, and financing and deploying small-scale, modular materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to increase recycling in communities with no or limited access to recycling.

Closed Loop Partners is based in New York City and is a registered B Corp. Learn more at closedlooppartners.com.

This publication is for informational purposes only, and nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any investment vehicle managed by Closed Loop Partners or any company in which Closed Loop Partners or its affiliates have invested. An offer or solicitation will be made only through a final private placement memorandum, subscription agreement and other related documents with respect to a particular investment opportunity and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such documents, including the qualifications necessary to become an investor. Information provided reflects Closed Loop Partners’ views as of a particular time and are subject to change without notice. You should obtain relevant and specific professional advice before making any investment decision.

NEW YORK, April 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the Composting Consortium, an industry collaboration led by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, released a groundbreaking report that fills a critical data gap for the U.S. composting industry: how well does certified, food-contact compostable packaging actually break down in real-world composting facilities? The report, Breaking It Down: The Realities of Compostable Packaging Disintegration in Composting Systems, shares findings from an 18-month study––the largest known field test of certified, food-contact compostable packaging conducted in North America––revealing the realities of compostable plastic and fiber disintegration in diverse in-field composting conditions.

In total, the study tested over 23,000 units of certified food-contact compostable packaging within large-scale industrial composting environments. This encompassed 31 types of fiber packaging & products and compostable plastic packaging & products––such as PLA and PHA––across 10 diverse composting facilities across the U.S.

The data is released at a critical time, as compostable packaging grows as an alternative to conventional plastics amidst an urgent waste crisis. Roughly one-third of the world’s food is wasted each year––a loss estimated at $230 billion. Nearly 60% of the uncontrolled methane emissions from municipal landfills are caused by discarded food, highlighting its significant impact on the environment. To address the urgent food waste and climate challenge, demand for organics circularity is rising, and with it, the volume of food-contact compostable packaging––a market poised to grow 16% annually in the U.S. until 2032, 4x faster than traditional plastic packaging. Today, the U.S. composting industry is in an early stage of transformation to accept and process more food waste; approximately 70% of the composters who process food also accept and process some format of food-contact compostable packaging, with the understanding that accepting these materials helps bring in more food waste to their facilities.

For compostable packaging to reach its full potential as a circular packaging solution, disintegration at end-of-life is critical, in tandem with consistent labeling and design that differentiates compostable and non-compostable packaging further upstream, as well as policies that incentivize robust composting infrastructure to process these materials. In this new study, the Composting Consortium focuses on how compostable packaging breaks down. Previously, scant information was publicly available on the disintegration of compostable packaging, particularly on the compost environments in which they disintegrate.

This groundbreaking study found that overall, compostable packaging breaks down successfully at composting facilities that meet reasonable operational parameters (e.g., compost pile temperatures, moisture, oxygen, pH, etc., defined in The Composting Handbook). While the Consortium’s study did not assess disintegration with the intention to “pass” or “fail” any specific compostable packaging or product, notably, the average compostable plastic and fiber packaging in-field performance in this study met disintegration thresholds used by industry groups:

• Compostable plastic packaging and products broke down successfully across five composting methods, and all 10 facilities’ varying processing timeframes and operating conditions, achieving 98% disintegration on average by surface area, which exceeds industry thresholds to achieve a 90% or higher disintegration.
• Compostable fiber packaging and products achieved 83% disintegration on average by surface area, meeting industry thresholds to achieve an 80% or higher disintegration. Findings showed that certain operating conditions, like turning, agitation and consistent moisture levels above 50%, support increased disintegration of fiber packaging and products.

The findings point to the viability of certified food-contact compostable packaging as an alternative packaging solution to single-use conventional plastic packaging. It also highlights the importance of ensuring that these materials align with available recovery infrastructure, and the importance of expanding robust recovery pathways to divert compostable packaging, and the food scraps they carry, from landfill––that is at the core of the Composting Consortium’s mission.

The Composting Consortium, in collaboration with its brand and industry partners, the US Composting Council, the Compost Research and Education Foundation and other groups, will leverage these findings to help inform policymaking around compostable packaging, update best management practices for composting facilities and shape a field test standard for evaluating compostable packaging disintegration at composting facilities. Data from this study will be donated to the Compostable Field Testing Program (CFTP), which will later launch an open-source database on the disintegration of compostable packaging. Additionally, ASTM International is currently developing an in-field test method for assessing disintegration of compostable items at composting facilities, and the data from this study will be used to inform the draft field testing method. As the Consortium moves into its next phase of work, the results of this study will shape its engagement and education efforts with composters, municipalities, regulators, brands and packaging manufacturers.

“Field testing for disintegration has been ongoing for three decades, and the Composting Consortium’s work across the value chain has significantly advanced insights for the industry,” says Diane Hazard, Executive Director of the Compost Research and Education Foundation. “The collaborative approach and open-source data from this project both advances field testing methods and equips compost manufacturers and brands with the knowledge to better understand the variability of disintegration across different systems, all major steps towards successfully processing compostable packaging.”

“Brands and manufacturers must prioritize material selection and design and labeling for compostable packaging to achieve optimal performance in composting environments, which can then incentivize composters to accept food-contact compostable packaging materials at their facilities,” says Frank Franciosi, Executive Director of the US Composting Council, an industry partner of the Composting Consortium. “As feedstock for composters becomes diversified and more complex, it’s important for all entities within the supply chain to support consumer education on source separation of organics and reevaluate best management practices to support those composters who choose to accept compostable packaging, and this study is another tool for our industry to be able to start that process.”

“Alongside design and reduction as well as reuse and recycling, composting is an important solution for waste mitigation. Through this research, the Composting Consortium sheds light on what is needed for compostable packaging to have the greatest positive impact. Informed by this robust data, we can together ensure the responsible growth of compostable packaging and composting infrastructure, and drive toward circular outcomes, including increased diversion of food scraps and compostable packaging from landfills,” says Kate Daly, Managing Director and Head of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners.

The study brought together the Consortium’s corporate brand partners, including PepsiCo, the NextGen Consortium, Colgate-Palmolive, Community Impact at Danaher, Eastman, The Kraft Heinz Company, Mars, Incorporated and Target Corporation; technical partners including the US Composting Council, Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), the Compostable Field Testing Program (CFTP) and the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI); and a cohort of compost partners including Atlas Organics, Napa Recycling & Waste Services, Specialized Environmental Technologies, Windham Solid Waste Management, Black Earth Compost, Ag Choice Organics Recycling, Happy Trash Can Compost, Veteran Compost and Dayton Foodbank. Advisory partners include 5 Gyres, Foodservice Packaging Institute (FPI), ReFED, the Compost Research and Education Foundation (CREF), the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), Compost Manufacturing Alliance (CMA), Eco-Cycle, University College London (UCL), Western Michigan University (WMU), University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

About the Composting Consortium

The Composting Consortium is a multi-year collaboration to pilot industry-wide solutions and build a roadmap for investment in technologies and infrastructure that enable the recovery of compostable food packaging and food scraps. The Composting Consortium is managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy. Learn more about the Consortium at closedlooppartners.com/composting-consortium/

About the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners

The Center for the Circular Economy is the innovation arm of Closed Loop Partners, a firm at the forefront of building the circular economy. The Center executes research and analytics, unites organizations to tackle complex material challenges and implements systemic change that advances the circular economy. The Center for the Circular Economy’s expertise spans circularity across the full lifecycle of materials, connecting upstream innovation to downstream recovery infrastructure and end markets. Learn more about the Center for the Circular Economy at closedlooppartners.com/the-center/

In January 2014, Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, invited the CEOs and leadership of Unilever, P&G, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, Kenvue (formerly Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health) and Keurig Dr Pepper to join him on stage at the annual meeting of Walmart’s suppliers. It was a groundbreaking moment. Some of the world’s largest corporations announced that they had joined together as the founding investors in the Closed Loop Fund, the inaugural fund of Closed Loop Partners, and one of the first investment funds focused on financing the development of the circular economy.  

It was a monumental first step toward changing the trajectory of how we use our planet’s resources––away from a ‘take-make-waste’ economy and toward a waste-free world designed around resource efficiency, driving economic growth. This is the beginning of our story at Closed Loop Partners. 

Several key factors led to that moment on stage. My journey before Closed Loop Partners had given me a clear view into the economic opportunity of rebuilding antiquated and inefficient supply chains into efficient and circular supply chains that continually reused materials in local markets. An urgent waste crisis, an increase in environmental regulation and growth in consumer demand for environmental responsibility, coupled with the emergence of circular innovations, made developing the circular economy so important to the future of business that it brought competitors together to form the Closed Loop Fund. This collaboration by industry leaders helped lay the foundational infrastructure for the circular economy in the U.S. 

A few years later, as the circular economy gained momentum, our original Closed Loop Fund attracted additional corporate investors, including 3M, Amazon, BlueTriton, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone and Starbucks, catalyzing more capital into circular economy infrastructure. As our ecosystem grew, adding more strategies and asset classes, it attracted capital from financial institutions, including funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, leading family offices and foundation endowments. To meet the growing interest in the circular economy, the vision of Closed Loop Fund was expanded into other strategies, now comprising Closed Loop Partners. 

What started with one fund a decade ago has grown into three businesses that form the Closed Loop Partners ecosystem, focused on three key development areas of the circular economy: our investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management, invests in circular solutions across venture capital, catalytic private debt and buyout private equity strategies; our innovation and advisory group, the Center for the Circular Economy, advances critical research and manages unprecedented pre-competitive industry collaborations; and our operating group, Closed Loop Builders, houses our first operating company, Circular Services, the largest privately held recycling company in the U.S. 

As I look back, some of Closed Loop Partners’ earliest catalytic investments demonstrate our founding vision and the foundation of the circular economy:  

• A decade ago, as changes in global policy highlighted the need for local circular economy infrastructure in the U.S., investments in recycling capacity expansion became critical. Eureka Recycling, a recycling company servicing Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, was a first mover in elevating U.S. recycling, leveraging their operational experience and engaging with policymakers, industry leaders and community advocates to influence systems change. Financing from Closed Loop Partners over the past 10 years supported a three-fold increase in Eureka’s polypropylene plastic recovery. Since then, they continue to be a leader in setting the standard for best-in-class recycling operations and infrastructure. 
• As the circular economy grew in the U.S., upgrades to municipal recycling systems were needed to keep pace with a growing volume of recovered materials. When aging recycling equipment needed replacing, the Waste Commission of Scott County pursued the change from dual- to single-stream recycling to improve material collection. Closed Loop Partners’ first loan nearly 10 years ago enabled the purchase of larger carts for curbside recycling and a redesigned single-stream MRF. The success of our first municipal loan catalyzed follow-on loans in 2018 and 2022, now enabling the county to serve 185,000+ households and process over 40,000 tons of paper, metal, glass and plastic per year. 
• The onset of corporate waste reduction goals also meant a rise in demand for alternative packaging. TemperPack was one of our first investments to advance new sustainable materials. TemperPack developed the first high performance, curbside recyclable thermal packaging for shipments of perishable goods such as food and pharmaceuticals. Today, they continue to be a leader in packaging innovation, with a range of solutions that protect products, strengthen brands, and keep waste out of supply chains.   
• Innovative circular solutions include new technologies that can work alongside material reduction, reuse and mechanical recycling to recover hard-to-recycle materials. One of our first investments was in PureCycle Technologies––its patented recycling process, developed by P&G and licensed to PureCycle Technologies, separates color, odor and any other contaminants from plastic waste feedstock to transform it into virgin-like resin. PureCycle closes the loop on the reuse of recycled plastics while making recycled plastics more accessible to companies looking to use a sustainable, recycled resin.* 

Since these catalytic investments were first made, the market has matured and Closed Loop Partners’ work has expanded to include venture capital and buyout private equity, as well as innovation advancement, infrastructure development and circular materials management. These early investments were a market signal, and our work today is a foundation upon which we will invest in and build the circular economy over the coming decades––as profitability attracts more investment and as supportive policy accelerates tailwinds for incumbent supply chains to transition to circularity. 

Closed Loop Partners now supports over 1,000 jobs across its ecosystem, all dedicated to advancing the circular economy. We are proud to work with leading organizations, cutting-edge innovators and over 50 of the world’s largest corporations committed to reducing waste across multiple areas––including plastics & packaging, organics, textiles and electronics. Closed Loop Capital Management manages over $500 million and has invested in over 80 companies, municipalities and organizations accelerating circular solutions. Together, our investments have kept 4.8 million tons of material in circulation and avoided 10.1 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to date. The Center for the Circular Economy has led groundbreaking industry-leading pre-competitive collaborations that are focused on solving some of the most complex supply chain and manufacturing challenges, including reduction, reuse and recovery solutions for foodservice packaging and retail bags. And most recently, with over $700m in commitments from Brookfield, Microsoft, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SK Group, Starbucks and Unilever, we launched Circular Services, which is now the largest privately held recycling company in the U.S. It operates 20 recycling facilities and serves some of the largest municipal contracts in the nation including New York City, Palm Beach County, Austin, San Antonio and Phoenix.  

Closed Loop Partners has evolved as the circular economy has advanced. Today, the circular economy is recognized as a core solution to climate change mitigation as we all as a template for more efficient business operations. As more stakeholders recognize the financial and environmental opportunity of the circular economy, billions of dollars are beginning to move toward circular systems. More industry leaders are collaborating around shared waste reduction goals, leaders of countries are working together on a global plastics treaty, U.S. states are proposing and passing bipartisan Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation to fund recycling programs, and C-suites of Fortune 100 companies are pushing to achieve ambitious publicly stated circular economy and climate goals. 

Transforming entire supply chains across multiple industries is the work of generations, but the world is changing faster today than it was 10 years ago. As Closed Loop Partners enters a new decade of action and impact, we see a future ripe with opportunity. We are now at a pivotal point, and the next decade will be critical to delivering outcomes and building transparent, circular systems. There is much more work to be done in the next phase of this systemic shift, but together with strategic partners, and across our platform, we are focused on expanding our impact and rebuilding industries to follow nature’s lead––grounded in resource regeneration and positioned for a resilient future.     

As we celebrate this milestone in 2024, we will be sharing key insights on our impact over the last 10 years, and what is to come in the next decades of building the circular economy.   

We invite you to join us in the transition to the circular economy. 

 —

*In October 2020, PureCycle Technologies fully paid off its loan from Closed Loop Partners, thus exiting the Closed Loop Infrastructure portfolio as a borrower. The Closed Loop Partners team, however, continues to engage with the PureCycle Technologies team as they continue growing their operations. 

*This publication is for informational purposes only, and nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any investment vehicle managed by Closed Loop Partners or any company in which Closed Loop Partners or its affiliates have invested. An offer or solicitation will be made only through a final private placement memorandum, subscription agreement and other related documents with respect to a particular investment opportunity and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such documents, including the qualifications necessary to become an investor. Information provided reflects Closed Loop Partners’ views as of a particular time and are subject to change without notice. You should obtain relevant and specific professional advice before making any investment decision. 

The way scrap metal is processed today is a mystery to most outside the industry. When a car or an appliance reaches the end of its useful life, most of us often rely on a junk removal service––or hope that the retailer selling the new equipment will take the old one with them on the way out. What happens after that?

Emily Molstad, Caleb Ralphs and their team at VALIS Insights have spent the past five years getting to know these markets in minute detail. Imagine spending days and nights captivated by how metals are processed in the U.S. after they’re done being used. Imagine coming face-to-face with the information asymmetries in the system that result in mixed metals being shipped overseas instead of recovered for local use. Imagine having hundreds of conversations with processors, metals refiners and customers of virgin and recycled metals to better understand why the system is built the way it is and where there are opportunities to improve it. That’s what this team has done so comprehensively over the past few years, driving toward the creation of their AI-powered software that is closing the loop on a circular economy for metal fabrication.

Today, used metals are still dramatically under-recovered in the U.S. Recycling rates for many non-ferrous and ferrous metals lag below 60%, despite the high resale value of these materials. As of the latest data from the EPA, only 27.8% of ferrous metals (those containing iron) were recycled in 2018––and nearly 7.2% of all municipal solid waste landfilled in 2018 was from steel––equivalent to 10.5M tons. The reality is often worse for non-ferrous metals (such as aluminum, copper, nickel) which may only be sorted for recycling after their heavier ferrous counterparts are removed.

These insufficient recycling rates for metals can be attributed to losses during material processing. Current recycling technology and processing capabilities struggle to address the growing complexity of mixed metal products, leading to contaminated and downgraded metal recovery. Scrap processors have historically recovered only certain metal commodities that were perceived to have higher resale value, leaving out other various mixed metals from the sorting process and shipping them overseas. As a result, significant volumes of aluminum, copper, nickel and cobalt are lost from our domestic supply. However, increasing domestic demand in the U.S. is driving up value for these types of materials, and tools like VALIS’s solution help scrap processors understand the monetary value of the metals they are currently selling overseas.

Closed Loop Partners has long understood the complexities of end-of-life commodity markets––we’ve been investing in the space for a decade and recognize that challenges exist at every stage in the value chain––collection, sorting, resale and ultimately recovery into the next life. For large format composite metals––such as automotive, appliances and heavy machinery––collection has rarely been a problem. These products are bulky enough that they typically end up in processing facilities around the country. The challenge is what happens after that.

We invested in VALIS because their software improves the sorting process of mixed metals and allows domestic processors to maximize the resale value of the outputs, keeping more metals in local circulation. By capturing data on commodity prices and input materials and delivering high-value insights on material and processing trends, they help optimize sortation processes to capture the most valuable metals that might otherwise be overlooked. With more optimized and predictable sortation, processors can command higher prices for higher quality outputs.

As the U.S. faces an extreme shortage of critical metals that are required for the renewable energy transition, solutions like this are increasingly important. Copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite and steel among others are seen as critical and are expected to be in . Many companies have now mandated chain-of-custody and fair labor validation of the minerals and metals used within their supply chains. VALIS helps create lower cost, resilient and transparent supply chains for these metals domestically––and focuses on metal recovery from current waste streams rather than incremental extraction. This provides multiple benefits including reducing waste, enhancing local economies and lowering the emissions footprint of the recycled metals.

Overall, VALIS helps recover more pure metals from our existing waste streams, reduces the complexity of the end products that are being sold for the next stage of processing and can help get metals back in circulation faster. They do all of this, while providing the traceability that’s so essential in today’s critical mineral supply chains. VALIS is improving the business case for scrap processors today, while creating new opportunities for greater material recovery from the urban mine. It makes economic sense. It makes emissions sense. And yes, it makes material sense. That’s the circular economy.

About Closed Loop Ventures Group at Closed Loop Partners

Closed Loop Partners is at the forefront of building the circular economy. The company is comprised of three key business segments: its investment arm, Closed Loop Capital Management; its innovation center, the Center for the Circular Economy; and its operating group, Circular Services. Closed Loop Capital Management manages venture capital, buyout private equity and catalytic private credit investment strategies. The firm’s venture capital group, the Closed Loop Ventures Group, has been investing early-stage capital into companies developing breakthrough solutions for the circular economy since 2016. The Closed Loop Ventures Group’s portfolio includes companies developing leading innovations in material science, robotics, agritech, sustainable consumer products and advanced technologies that further the circular economy. Closed Loop Partners is based in New York City and is a registered B Corp. Closedlooppartners.com.

About VALIS Insights

VALIS Insights is building AI-powered software that makes recycling more profitable, material supply chains more sustainable and closes the loop on a circular economy for metal fabrication. With VALIS technology metal recyclers gain visibility into their material quality and make data-driven process decisions to extract more value. Founded in 2022 by experts in metal recycling and data science, VALIS is dedicated to delivering the software and data solutions needed across the recycling value chain to ensure the materials of yesterday are properly recovered for the manufacturing of tomorrow. For more information visit https://www.valisinsights.com/.

This publication is for informational purposes only, and nothing contained herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in any investment vehicle managed by Closed Loop Partners or any company in which Closed Loop Partners or its affiliates have invested. An offer or solicitation will be made only through a final private placement memorandum, subscription agreement and other related documents with respect to a particular investment opportunity and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained in such documents, including the qualifications necessary to become an investor. Information provided reflects Closed Loop Partners’ views as of a particular time and are subject to change without notice. You should obtain relevant and specific professional advice before making any investment decision.