A London-based start-up using engineered enzymes to break down hard-to-recycle plastics into materials that can be used again.
Epoch Biodesign uses enzymes, the natural proteins that speed up chemical reactions, to break down plastics that are very hard to recycle today. These include flexible films, multi-layer food packaging and plastics from farming and manufacturing. The enzymes are designed with the help of artificial intelligence and made by microbes in a process described as similar to brewing. They work at room temperature, and what is left after the breakdown can be reused. The company has said it plans to build its first industrial-scale plant and to license its enzyme-design approach to other synthetic biology companies. It describes the way the enzymes work as like leaves breaking down in soil.
The founder and chief executive is Jacob Nathan, who started Epoch while still very young. He has said he found his co-founder online after writing a school paper about using enzymes to break down hard-to-recycle plastic. That co-founder is Professor Douglas Kell, a systems biologist who has spent a career engineering enzymes. In his own words, Mr Nathan's ultimate vision is "that we can decentralise recycling completely", and he has said "Instead of extracting, we're going to brew everything". In a bank case study, he described the goal as scaling Epoch's production to "underpin the world's circular manufacturing infrastructure". He has also said: "This is what real circularity looks like."
Epoch is described in the UK business and technology press as London-based, and a bank case study calls it a UK-based start-up. The pages we read did not give a street address, a lab location or the number of people in the UK, and one profile did not mention a base at all, so we cannot say more than that. Its first full-scale plant is planned but we found no confirmed location, so treat the idea of a UK plant as an ambition rather than a fact.
The pages we read say little about culture. They show a very young chief executive paired with an experienced professor, which suggests a company that mixes new ideas with deep research experience. They name Mr Nathan and Professor Kell but no other team members, so we cannot describe the wider team honestly. Investors and customers quoted in the press speak well of the company's ambition, but that is not the same as staff describing what working there is like.
A company like this employs biologists and biochemists who design and test enzymes, data scientists and machine learning engineers who use AI to predict which enzyme designs will work, process engineers who plan how to scale up from the lab to a factory, and business, partnerships and operations staff who deal with plastics producers and recyclers. If you enjoy biology, chemistry, maths or computing, it is a clear example of how those subjects can tackle the plastic waste problem. Check the company website for its current openings.
Website: www.epochbiodesign.com
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