Circular startups look to finance their businesses to scale up
Summary of the contribution of Martijn Lopes Cardozo, CEO at Black Bear Carbon.
Every year, more than 1 billion tyres are thrown away and most of them are landfilled, or even worse, burnt, releasing massive amounts of CO2. Their production is also very polluting, using a product called carbon black, which requires 2.5 litres of oil for every kg produced, we extract the carbon black and reuse it in products ranging from rubber to ink to toner cartridges and mascara.
It has to compete in quality with carbon black from fossil fuels and it has to compete on price – which it does because our feedstock is so cheap. For every kg of carbon black we produce we save 5 kg of CO2.
One of the big challenges for circular economy projects is scaleability. We need to prove the model is profitable with our first plant, but then we need to be able to finance 20 plants at once, and not have to raise the money for each one on a case-by-case basis.
View a short video of Martijn Lopes Cardozo on scaling finance in the circular economy.