The circular economy grew 7.5% in the past year and now employs more than 2.2 million people globally, according to StartUs Insights’ 2025 Circular Economy Report. With the North American market projected to grow by 25.65% through 2031, investors are placing increasingly bold bets on startups that aim to close material loops across fashion, electronics, packaging, energy, and waste management.
Here are the circular economy startups that earned the most recognition in 2025 and, if you dig on innovation, deserve your attention in 2026.
Circ
Circ has created a patented hydrothermal process that separates and recovers polyester and cotton from blended polycotton textiles used in most modern garments. The process produces raw materials that are as useful as new textiles in clothing. Circ is currently the only textile-to-textile recycler that can handle polycotton blends, recovering both materials. In May 2025, the company announced plans to build the world’s first industrial-scale polycotton recycling facility in Saint-Avold, France, with the capacity to process 70,000 metric tons of material each year.
Reported impact
Circ works with Zara, H&M Group, Mara Hoffman, and Christian Siriano to make recycled fibers more common in fashion. The company’s pilot program led by UNIDO recycled 2.6 tons of polycotton manufacturing waste from H&M’s suppliers in Bangladesh. Since polycotton blends make up 77% of the global textile market, but less than 1% of all textiles are recycled back into textiles, Circ’s scalable solution could make a big impact, making fast fashion less damaging.
Recognition
Circ was a 2023 Earthshot Prize Finalist and was named a Circ was a 2023 Earthshot Prize Finalist and was named a 2024 Fast Company Most Innovative Company and BloombergNEF Pioneer. The company was also recognized by TIME and Statista as a Top GreenTech Company and is a Certified B Corporation. In March 2025, Circ closed a $25 million funding round and the company’s first commercial-scale plant was announced by France’s Macron administration at the 2025 Choose France Summit.
SOLARCYCLE
SOLARCYCLE is solving the photovoltaic panel recycles problem with a process that recovers up to 95% of valuable materials in solar panels, including aluminum, glass, copper, silver, and silicon. The metals and silicon are put back into the U.S. solar supply chain, reducing the nation’s dependence of imported materials. The company runs a processing facility in Odessa, Texas, and plans to open a larger facility in Georgia that can process up to 10 million panels each year. SOLARCYCLE is also building the first crystalline silicon solar glass factory in the U.S., which will use recycled glass to produce up to 5 gigawatts of new solar glass.
Reported impact
In 2024, SOLARCYCLE recycled over 480,000 solar panels and prevented 13.8 million kg of CO₂e emissions. The company expected to recycle nearly one million panels by the end of 2025 and twice that number in 2026. More than 90 energy companies have chosen SOLARCYCLE as their recycling partner. By 2050, decommissioned solar panels could reach 80 million metric tons worldwide, creating a huge opportunity for material recovery.
Recognition
OLARCYCLE was named to the 2025 Global Cleantech 100 by Cleantech Group and was the only solar panel recycling company on TIME’s list of America’s Top GreenTech Companies 2025. The company was also featured in the StartUs Insights 2025 Circular Economy Report as one of five innovative startups. SOLARCYCLE has raised over $80 million in equity funding from investors including Microsoft, along with a $1.5 million DOE grant.
Greyparrot
Greyparrot uses AI-powered camera systems on conveyor belts in recycling facilities to identify and track more than 111 waste materials in real time. Its Analyzer platform helps facilities sort more accurately and recover more materials, while the Sync system adds AI intelligence to existing sorting machines. In 2025, Greyparrot launched Deepnest, the first AI-powered packaging waste intelligence platform for consumer brands, which helps companies like Unilever, L’Oréal, and Asahi Group track how their packaging performs in real-world recycling systems.
Reported impact
Greyparrot’s systems have identified more than 100 billion waste objects so far. The company has 187 Analyzers operating in over 20 countries that have detected about $1 billion in recyclable materials in the waste streams the monitors. The company estimates that using its systems worldwide could reveal up to $100 billion in recyclable value each year by 2040.
Recognition
Greyparrot was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions 2025 and was selected for Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies 2025. The company ranked #104 on the Financial Times list of fastest-growing European startups in 2025. Greyparrot has raised a total of $27.2 million in funding to date.
PulpaTronics
PulpaTronics makes RFID tags made entirely from paper. Traditional RFID tags use mined metals and silicon chips, which create electronic waste and can contaminate recycling when attached to packaging. PulpaTronics’ tags use laser-cut paper for product tracking, so they can be fully recycled when mixed with regular paper waste.
Reported impact
Paper tags remove the need for metal mining in RFID production, make manufacturing simpler, and eliminate a major source of e-waste in packaging. As retail and logistics companies use more RFID for inventory management, PulpaTronics can provide a scalable way to keep these systems compatible with circular material flows.
Recognition
PulpaTronics won the 2024 Green Alley Award, Europe’s longest-running circular economy startup prize, chosen from a record 339 applicants. The company was also named a startup winner at the Santander X Global Challenge Circular Economy Revolution in June 2025, sharing €120,000 in prizes with five other companies.
traceless materials
A Hamburg, Germany-based startup, traceless materials makes a natural biomaterial plastic alternative using agricultural industry leftovers, such as grain processing byproducts. The traceless® material is certified 100% bio-based, home-compostable, and plastic-free. After use, the material can be processed with standard plastics industry equipment to make rigid molded parts, flexible films, paper coatings, and adhesives.
Reported impact
Traceless® reduces CO₂ emissions by 91% and fossil energy use during production by 89%. The material contains no harmful chemicals and does not compete for grain with food production, using the leftovers instead. With 75 employees and its first large-scale plant being built, traceless is now moving from pilot to commercial production and aims to replace thousands of tons of conventional plastic a year. The company has announced a partnership with global packaging manufacturer Mondi.
Recognition
Traceless won the 2021 Green Alley Award and received a €2.42 million EIC Accelerator grant from the European Innovation Council. The company also won the German Entrepreneur Award and the German Sustainability Award/Next Economy Award. In 2023, Traceless secured €36.6 million in Series A funding, plus about €5 million from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment’s Innovation Programme.
Kelpi
Kelpi, based in Bristol, UK, has developed recyclable barrier coatings—the stuff that makes packaging moisture resistant and shiny—made from seaweed. These coatings replace fossil-fuel-based plastics on paper and cardboard packaging. Kelpi’s biomaterials resist water, oxygen, grease, and acid, matching or even exceeding the performance of regular plastic coatings, while remaining fully recyclable and home-compostable. Because seaweed grows without requiring fertilizers, fresh water, or farmland, and absorbs a lot of CO₂ as it grows, the raw material Kelpi is made from is environmentally friendly.
Reported impact
Kelpi has research and development contracts with L’Oréal, Diageo, and Waitrose, and is moving its manufacturing pilots toward commercial launch in the next year. The technology solves a key problem in paper packaging recycling, because plastic barrier coatings are not recyclable. Kelpi only uses seaweed from sustainable farms, which also helps reduce ocean acidification.
Recognition
Kelpi was named a scaleup winner at the Santander X Global Challenge | Circular Economy Revolution in June 2025. The company has raised about £9.5 million ($12.7 million), including funding from Innovate UK.
Protein Evolution
Protein Evolution (PEI) uses AI-designed enzymes to break down plastic and polyester textile waste into their original chemical building blocks, called monomers, which can be reused to make new plastics. The company focuses on polyester waste, such as PET bottles, clamshell containers, and synthetic textiles. The company’s has AI mapped tens of millions of unique enzymes to find the best ways to handle different types of waste, providing a biological alternative to energy-intensive mechanical and chemical recycling methods.
Reported impact
PEI says its enzyme-based recycling process uses little energy and produces no emissions, representing a different way to tackle the plastics problem than approaches that rely on heat, which generates CO2 emissions. If this technology works at scale, it could help recycle the roughly 87% of clothing that now ends up in incinerators or landfills.
Recognition
Protein Evolution was featured in the StartUs Insights 2025 Circular Economy Report as one of five highlighted startups. The company has $20 million in seed funding.
Radical Dot
Radical Dot, another German startup, converts mixed plastic waste, including hard-to-recycle PVC and polystyrene that usually go to landfill or incineration, into chemicals that can be used to make new plastics, replacing fossil-based materials in industrial chemical production. The approach reduces the need for new petrochemicals and can help prevent plastic waste, particular polystyrene foam and peanuts, from reaching the environment.
Reported impact
By focusing on mixed plastic waste that current mechanical recycling systems cannot process, Radical Dot fills a gap in today’s recycling infrastructure. The technology aims to cut both fossil fuel use and harmful emissions linked to making new chemicals from oil.
Recognition
Radical Dot was named a startup winner at the Santander X Global Challenge | Circular Economy Revolution in June 2025, along with PulpaTronics and Metalchemy, sharing €120,000 in prizes.
Glacier
Featured on Sustainability In Your Ear, December 2025
Co-founded by Rebecca Hu-Thrams and Areeb Malik, Glacier has developed AI-powered robotic sorters for material recovery facilities (MRFs). The robots use computer vision trained on more than 3 billion images of real recycling waste to identify and sort over 70 types of materials at up to 45 picks per minute, around the clock. These robots work in environments where injury rates for human workers are twice as high as in construction. Glacier’s systems also generate brand- and package-level data about what is actually in the waste stream to help brands like Amazon see which packaging designs are truly recyclable in practice.
Reported impact
Glacier’s robots now process recycling for about one in ten American households. At a Detroit MRF, AI cameras on a residue line revealed large PET losses the facility suspected but had never measured. Adding just one robotic sorter cut PET going to landfill by two-thirds and brought in $138,000 in extra annual revenue. Most facilities see a return on investment in less than a year. As Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws expand in the U.S., with seven states now requiring producers to fund and document packaging recycling, Glacier’s brand-level waste data will become essential for compliance.
Recognition
Glacier was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions 2025. The company raised $16 million in Series A funding and $7.7 million in earlier funding from NEA and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. Glacier has also been featured in TechCrunch, Fast Company, and Waste360.
CurbWaste
Featured on Sustainability In Your Ear, February 2026
CurbWaste, founded by fourth-generation waste industry professional Mike Marmo, is building an operating system for independent waste haulers. These family-run businesses are the backbone of America’s waste collection system. The company’s CurbPOS platform combines order management, real-time dispatch, automated billing, and materials tracking in one place, and generates automated LEED diversion reports and Recycling Certification Institute documentation. The data it delivers provides the per-load, per-material chain-of-custody data that EPR programs need.
Reported impact
CurbWaste serves over 150 haulers in 40 states, bringing digital tools to a trillion-dollar industry that has seen little technology adoption. By standardizing data flows for different municipal and environmental reporting needs, the platform creates the transparency the circular economy needs to work. It connects collection systems to processing facilities and establishes the material traceability needed for EPR compliance across the country. Marmo sees CurbWaste becoming the waste industry’s main system of record, similar to how Salesforce is used in CRM.
Recognition
CurbWaste raised a $28 million Series B round in October 2025, brings the company’s total funding to $50 million. CurbWaste has been featured in Axios, Waste Dive, PYMNTS, and Resource Recycling.
Today’s Innovators Lead a Growing Movement
This year’s most-recognized circular economy startups stand out for the wide range of material challenges they address, from polycotton textiles and solar panels to paper packaging coatings and mixed plastic waste. The companies that have attracted the most capital and recognition have something in common, they have moved beyond proof-of-concept and shown commercial viability by signing agreements with major brands and building their first industrial-scale facilities.
The circular economy is still a small part of the global materials system, only about 7.2% of used materials are currently cycled back into the economy, according to the Circle Economy Foundation. However, with new policies like EPR regulations gaining ground in Europe and a growing number of U.S. states, and over $670 million in venture funding going to circular economy startups in 2025 alone, the companies on this list are well positioned to show that circularity can work at scale; and then watch the floodgates open to bring a host of new circular choices to you.