Meta has agreed to buy environmental attribute certificates (EACs) from polymer startup MacroCycle Technologies, in a deal that will finance the buildout of MacroCycle's first commercial plant in the Southwestern United States.

MacroCycle announced the agreement last week. Meta will use the certificates to address emissions from plastics in its supply chain, and the payment flows directly into the new plant, which is expected to produce 5,000 tonnes (roughly 5,500 U.S. short tons) of recycled PET annually. The output will carry third-party verification — a point that matters for brands that need auditable recycled-content claims under state recycling laws and EU directives.

For textile and packaging sourcing teams, the more relevant detail is the technology behind the plant. Cambridge, Mass.-based MacroCycle, founded in 2023 by Stwart Peña Feliz and Jan-Georg Rosenboom out of MIT, developed a solvent-based process called SolvoGenesis that converts textile and packaging waste into virgin-quality PET while keeping the polymer chain intact.

That positions it between the two established recycling routes. Mechanical recycling is cheap but degrades material with each cycle and struggles with complex waste streams. Full depolymerization delivers virgin-grade output but consumes large amounts of energy. SolvoGenesis, according to the company, handles mixed, blended and contaminated feedstock — the reality of post-consumer apparel — and requires 80 percent less energy than conventional PET production because it avoids breaking PET all the way down to monomers.

"Most recycling forces a trade-off," Peña Feliz, the company's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "Mechanical processes are cheap but degrade the material with every cycle and struggle with complex waste streams. Chemical processes that break PET all the way down to its monomers are energy-hungry and expensive."

He continued: "SolvoGenesis sidesteps the tradeoff. We dissolve and purify PET while keeping the polymer chain intact, which is why we can take the mixed, blended, and contaminated waste that other processes reject and still come out with virgin-quality material at a fraction of the energy."

On the textile side, MacroCycle has developed MacroTex, a 100 percent polyester made entirely from upcycled clothing. The process turns textile waste into virgin-grade resin suitable for low-cost yarn and fabric, and the company says cotton and elastane in blended garments can be preserved and valorized as co-products rather than discarded.

The capacity question is central. A 5,000-tonne annual output is modest against global PET demand, but MacroCycle frames the plant as a supply-chain play as much as a recycling one. The company notes the U.S. imports over 40 percent of its virgin PET and 20 percent of its recycled PET, while domestic rPET capacity shrinks. Early backing came from Volta Circle, the family office of the founders and owners of one of the world's largest PET producers.

For Meta, the purchase fits a broader procurement strategy aimed at its 2030 net-zero target. The company has used early offtake to seed low-carbon markets in cement and steel and now aims to replicate that approach in plastics.

"Reaching net zero means advancing lower-carbon solutions across our supply chain and in the materials we use," said Devon Lake, head of net zero strategy at Meta. "We have been working to address emissions across our supply chain on materials like cement and steel, and our early procurement of materials from these sectors helped pave the way for the maturing markets we see now. We hope this transaction with MacroCycle will have a similar outcome in the plastics market."

Neither company disclosed the certificate volume or the payment amount, and the plant's construction timeline remains unspecified. If the facility reaches nameplate capacity, sourcing directors seeking domestically produced, third-party-verified rPET for polyester programs will gain a new — if initially small — supplier option.