Circular Economy Startups

Wasted operates a portable toilet rental service with a focus on sustainable practices and environmental responsibility. The service is available in Burlington, Vermont and Boston and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

2 investors

Wastequip is a North American manufacturer of waste and recycling equipment, offering standardized products such as tarping systems, refuse trucks, hoists, and carts to national waste haulers. The company was built by consolidating regional waste equipment manufacturers under a single umbrella to serve as a one-stop supplier for the waste industry.

2 investors

Phenix operates an anti-waste platform in France that helps retailers and manufacturers redistribute or resell their unsold food and non-food goods through a network of over 3,000 partner charities, with digital tools for donation traceability, CERFA generation, and regulatory compliance (loi Garot, loi AGEC). It serves professional clients in retail and industry looking to reduce waste, cut disposal costs, and meet legal obligations.

2 investors

WholeSurplus provides AI-powered waste management and circular economy solutions for producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. The platform matches surplus products across food, textiles, packaging, and chemicals with buyers through technology-based services to maximize economic, environmental, and social value.

2 investors

WinWin makes cocoa-free chocolate using fermentation and food science to convert sustainable, lower-cost ingredients into a product that snaps, tastes and melts like conventional chocolate. It positions itself as the UK's first company to bring cocoa-free chocolate to market.

2 investors

Worldly provides supply chain intelligence software for consumer goods brands, manufacturers, and retailers to measure, report, and improve their environmental and social impact. The platform hosts sustainability assessment methodologies for the apparel, textile, footwear, and broader consumer goods industries, serving over forty thousand organizations globally.

2 investors

Yaga is an online marketplace for buying and selling secondhand clothing and goods, with buyer protection, bank/card payments, and delivery. It operates via a mobile app and website serving consumers in Estonia.

2 investors

Garage Bank offers financial services that visualize and monetize the value of physical goods, including a car lease-back business using vehicle valuation systems. The Japan-based fintech company operates at the intersection of finance and reuse.

2 investors

Laxus operates a subscription service for renting luxury designer handbags from 60 brands, with free shipping, professional cleaning, and damage protection included. The platform emphasizes sustainability by encouraging reuse of products instead of single ownership and disposal.

2 investors

ECOMMIT operates a "circular commerce" business that handles collection, sorting, and redistribution of used goods and waste in one process, with a focus on apparel, serving businesses and local governments to enable reuse and recycling. The company also provides traceability and data reporting on reuse/recycling rates and CO2 reduction, operating seven circular centers across Japan.

2 investors

TBM develops and manufactures environmentally-conscious materials, including its LIMEX material, and runs product sales and resource-recycling operations. The company operates factories and subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, focused on sustainable materials and the circular economy.

2 investors

Alice Style is a circular economy sharing platform that enables users to rent and share underutilized items such as appliances and beauty devices. The company operates an SDGs-focused sharing service designed to shift consumption patterns from disposable ownership to shared use.

2 investors

[Re] Waste provides waste management and recycling services for businesses, including custom recycling programs such as recycling golf grips, aimed at diverting waste from landfills and supporting corporate sustainability and ESG goals. It offers end-to-end collection, consolidation, processing, and reporting to help companies meet zero-waste targets.

1 investor

RecycleNow provides information helping people identify which household items can be recycled rather than thrown away, and shares news on recycling legislation such as England's Simpler Recycling rules for businesses. It serves the general public and workplaces in England seeking guidance on recycling practices.

1 investor

123Carbon operates a non-public, blockchain-based registry that issues and assures immutable Emission Allowance Certificates (insets) for carbon reductions across multimodal transport (road, sea, air, rail, barging) and industries such as chemicals, cement, concrete, and steel. It provides companies and their value-chain partners a branded, customizable platform to create, manage, transfer, and report insetting certificates verified by external assurance partners under ISO 14083, 17029, 14065 standards.

1 investor

BClean makes plant-based, hypoallergenic cleaning products including laundry detergents, detergent sheets, dish soap, surface cleaners, and refillable all-purpose cleaning tablets. The brand focuses on consumer household cleaning products formulated without harsh chemicals.

1 investor

OnePlanet provides industrial-scale recycling services for end-of-life solar panels, recovering up to 99% of materials such as silicon, aluminum, copper, and glass and returning them to U.S. supply chains. It serves independent power producers, utilities, and developers managing solar decommissioning nationwide, offering R2v3 Appendix G certified chain-of-custody and ESG compliance documentation.

1 investor

21Market operates a marketplace for refurbished and used mobile phones in South Korea, using AI-powered inspection systems to verify device condition and performance. The platform ensures transparent pricing and quality assurance for buyers and sellers through automated diagnostics and data-driven verification.

1 investor

2DaLoop offers the Unity Engine, a frontline data ingestion tool that uses AR-guided image capture and text-based tools to identify recycled units, create a unit-level system of record, and automatically route items for refurbish, part harvest, or scrap. It targets recycling facility operators and OEM take-back programs, aiming to replace manual data entry and spreadsheets with software built for the recycling floor.

1 investor

3F Waste Recovery repurposes by-products from fish, farm, and forest industries — such as shells, fins, bones, and skins — into high-value ingredients used in nutrition, cosmetics, medicine, and pharmaceuticals. It provides biotechnology development, brand building, and market consulting for farmers, fish harvesters, and food and seafood processors in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada.

1 investor

3R Pallets manufactures sustainable shipping pallets from renewable bamboo and provides closed-loop tracking software for logistics operations. The company serves businesses seeking eco-friendly alternatives to traditional pallets.

1 investor

58 Facettes is a French online platform for buying and selling second-hand luxury jewelry and watches, offering 50,000+ pieces from major maisons and vintage brands, each appraised and certified by its in-house experts and a network of professional partners. It also runs a Paris boutique and an integrated workshop for resizing, repolishing, and restoration, and provides free appraisals for sellers.

1 investor

5QXT is a process development company that characterizes industrial slags—using techniques like ICP-OES to map metal composition—and designs bench-tested recovery routes to extract metals such as zinc, copper, and others from what is otherwise treated as waste. It partners with industrial operators to de-risk slag valorization and support metal supply for the energy transition.

1 investor

5REDO (5R Enabler Designs and Operations Inc.) is a circular economy consulting firm offering services in circularity integration, sustainability and ESG reporting, life cycle assessment, and sustainable materials R&D for businesses. It also provides a web-based life cycle assessment calculator (ImpactLens) and sustainability training seminars, serving clients across sectors such as food, biotech, manufacturing, and healthcare procurement.

1 investor