How Student Research Is Driving Circular Economy Innovation
In this episode of Change Cycle, host Christine Yeager explores how breakthrough university research and student-led innovation are powering the circular economy. Many people assume academic projects stay trapped in labs, but young entrepreneurs are launching startups that win major federal awards and land commercial supply contracts. Christine breaks down the four primary funding models for academic innovation and explains the financial realities of landfill diversion. She also examines why low recycling tipping fees often create a bigger barrier to adoption than the technology itself. Listen in to discover how fresh perspectives from students can help industry leaders overcome cynical ruts and scale real solutions.
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How Student Research Is Driving Circular Economy Innovation
Student Energy And Passion In Sustainability
Welcome back to the show. Every so often, I end up in front of a room of college students talking about packaging, waste, careers, transitions, and extended producer responsibility. I'll tell you that it recalibrates me every time. When I was speaking in front of a bunch of students at CU Boulder, they asked the most insightful, sometimes challenging questions, and they just seemed really excited to change the world. I do not want to say they're not jaded yet, but students have this excitement. You remember, maybe if you were a student, I'm sure you were a student at some point, whether it be college or not, but when you're a student, you're just like, excited to learn, excited to see and apply that knowledge to something real.
That's what I want to talk about is like, there's all these students, there are all these people out there who are taking a lens to circularity around what we can learn. How do we learn how to apply this new knowledge in a way that hopefully will work? Hopefully, this will be a bit of a hopeful episode. I just mean, there are a lot of reasons why the circular economy hits roadblocks, but I want to talk a little bit about where research and students who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and absolutely convinced they're going to fix this. Hopefully, give some excitement back to you that will take you into your day and thinking about, like, this can work.
Commercial Success Of Student-Led Startups
There are things out there that can work and can scale. We want to try to talk a little bit about why it is like this. Why are there these challenges, not just how do I comply with the fee schedule? Here's the thing that I did not really expect when I was digging into this episode. Some of these students are actually doing it. They're actually changing. They're not just being heartwarming. Isn't that nice? They're doing it in a raised $21 million, or signed a commercial manufacturing agreement, or won a $100 million federal award kind of way.
I do not know. Sometimes we do not give young people enough credit for what they're able to accomplish these days. We're going to talk about what's coming out of universities and coming into the circular economy. The students, the research, and because I think it's important to understand where the money's coming from, because that can shape a lot of what's being funded. Hopefully, this is going to be genuinely good news, but we'll also talk about some of the barriers and walls that this work can run into. This is meant to be like a good episode in the good, the bad, and the ugly of this season.
Here we go. Vocabulary check. Tipping fee. This is what a hauler pays per ton to dump waste at a landfill or a transfer station. In 2024, the US national average was $62.28 a ton. That's up about ten percent from the year before. Which is one of the biggest jumps since 2022. Why do you care about this? This number drives a lot of the economics around the circular economy and decides whether or not something could be economically viable, especially from region to region, because the tipping fee can change per region.
Understanding The Valley Of Death In Technology
Valley of Death. Engineers rate how ready a technology is on a scale of 1 to 9, from ID on a whiteboard as a one to running and already in a facility, like a nine. The valley of death is the middle of that scale, roughly four to seven. Science works. It runs in a lab, but it's not being funded at scale yet. It's applied for a research grant, or maybe it's not proven enough for a bank to support it. This is where the last five years of chemical recycling disappointments happened.
Technologies that were genuinely out of five got sold to producers as if they were closer to a nine. When somebody tells you that recycling technology exists, you want to have a follow-up question that is like, at what scale? Blended funding. When a research center draws money from more than one source, like a university's budget, state appropriation, a federal grant, or corporate members, it may take a little from all of these sources for the same project. I'm bringing this up just because this is a bit like the dominant model for now is that these projects have to get multiple funding sources.
Real-World Student Innovation Milestones
It's just the nature of how funding is working these days. Take a different approach on the new segment and talk a little bit about student innovation that's been happening in recent months. Nova Loop has two students. With a science fair idea. Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao met as high school students in Vancouver, working on a science fair project about bacteria that break down plastic, and gave a TED Talk about it. They founded the company as undergraduates. It chemically converts post-consumer polyethylene, the film and flexible fraction, into usable plastic.
Interacting with students reminds us that solving packaging challenges requires optimism and unconstrained thinking. #CircularEconomy
This is a material that every program, EPR program, is struggling to find an end market for. They got $21 million in Series B funding in June of 2025. In October of 2025, they landed a manufacturing agreement targeting a commercial facility in early 2028 at roughly 16,000 tons a year. They have a real customer running it, put it in a speaker, a sneaker, and why does this matter? Flexible film is the single hardest thing on any covered material list. Producers are paying eco-modulated fees on it right now. These students, who did not know it was impossible, are eleven years in and signing a manufacturing agreement. That's exciting.
In a cycle, he went from a doctoral thesis to a hundred million dollars in federal awards. Megan O'Connor, co-founder and CEO, used her studies from Duke and Harvard. Duke is where she got her PhD, and she found a way to modular refining that takes black mass from spent lithium-ion batteries and produces nickel. That's very technical, but basically a way to recycle these lithium-ion batteries and then turn them back into a material that can be used domestically. August of this year, the Department of Energy selected Nth Cycle for award negotiations for up to 100 million to build a Southeast US refinery. The targeted operations for 2029.
It's already commercial. The Fairfield, Ohio, facility has been running since 2024. This shows that federal policy is now simultaneously restricting the export of this material and funding domestic capacity to process it. Which some might say is unusually coherent for US Industrial policy. It started with a graduate student's research. An entity out of Michigan State took the Rice Business Plan Competition, which is co-founded by Madhav Aggarwal at Michigan State. The organization, BRCE out of Michigan State, took the Rice Business Plan Competition and got a $200,000 grand prize and a $25,000 sustainable investment prize.
The technology is a polymer composite lattice script that replaces textiles by engineering directional grip at the yarn level. This is the earliest-stage thing that I'm going to talk about in this segment, and it may not make it. The point is that it's a pipeline with $600,000 moved to a student team in a single afternoon. $200,000 in grand prize and $25,000 in sustainable investment, but they in total got eleven awards. That equated to over $600,000. Just a couple of other examples. Polygon Systems, a Princeton spinout, has biomimetic microplastic filters.
Exploring The Four Core Research Funding Models
They raised four million in seed in February, plus 1.65 million from the New Jersey Innovation Evergreen Fund. They're piloting with the Atlantic County Utilities Authority. Amber Cycle, founded by two UC Davis undergrads, built a molecular regeneration of polyester from end-of-life textiles. They have raised $50 million. I have a partnership with Arctrix and Athleta. Who's paying for all of these student-funded research and execution projects? As I shared, it's usually a mixture, but there are basically four types of funding models. There's university funding, and the institution spends its own money because it believes that the field matters.
Michigan State's School of Packaging, which was founded in 1952, is the first school in the country to offer a specialized packaging degree. The average undergraduate salary coming out of the program is over $70,000 a year. In February 2024, the Board of Trustees approved a $25 million expansion of the building and its research capacity. Here, you're getting stability and independence with the university-funded program. You can also see state-funded. A state legislature or agency puts public money into a research center to answer questions the state needs answered.
An example is the Center for Sustainable Materials Management, who's going to be my next, somebody from my, that organization is my next guest. This was launched in 2020 with over 5.75 million over five years, funded from New York's environmental protection fund, and over eleven million in state money since 2019. What you're getting there is public record funding findings, and sometimes findings that are very true about the positives and negatives of the particular system that is funding them. What they have published is that New York spends $788 million a year on recycling for a 15% recycling rate.
They're looking at how we bring that cost per household down. What you do not see is not necessarily alignment with the political calendar. New York now has some pretty strong pre-EPR evidence that should go into the next legislative session, hopefully. They would still need to pass the bill. Bucket three would be privately funded. A company endows a center or a program. The Pitt-Covestro Circular Economy Program is where PhD students earn a circular economy certificate on top of their home degree.
The tech valley of death is where good science stalls before reaching commercial scale. Here's how funding helps cross it.
It has eighteen plus credits, industry internships, three-year fellowships, and the money is funding the curriculum. UVM's Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability got $1.5 million from Casella Waste Systems. Casella operates Vermont's only landfill. In May of 2025, five PhD fellows from UVM's own program published an op-ed calling it a wasted opportunity and arguing that the framing functions as greenwashing.
I do not know if they're right or not, but it's just that there's some criticism there about the funding of this program. Bucket four would be blended, which is where a lot of the funding ends up coming from, so an example would be Remade Institute in Rochester, a Department of Energy Manufacturing USA Institute, launched in 2017, gets up to $70 million in federal funding matched by $70 million in industry cost share. There are roughly 150 members, and more than 55% of the industry members are small and mid-sized businesses. They're funding various programs and projects, about 103 projects since 2017.
Its projects start at a readiness level of like 6 or 7 on that technology scale we talked about earlier within this valley of death. It's on purpose because it's trying to fund things that are ready to scale. It's explicitly built to fund this middle where good technology sometimes goes to die if it doesn't get the funding to take it all the way to a nine. What you get is the private markets discipline plus public patients, but you do lose some of the potential neutrality.
Remade has been diversifying. 2.36 million came from Empire State Development in March 2026. Those are kind of the different examples of funding mechanisms. Here's the good and the thing I want you to take away most from this episode. When we talk about circular economy investment in this country, the conversation is usually about California and New York because of SB 54, which is a very stringent and strict law. New York, because of the needs assessment and a bill that keeps almost passing.
Michigan is arguably running one of the most aggressive state programs in the country if you're talking about investment back into the system. In 2025, they had 11.8 million total in recycling grants, including 5.6 million through the next cycle of Michigan for circular economy projects. In October 2024, they put $4.5 million into three critical minerals and battery recycling grants, and all three went to universities. In the next cycle, Michigan is still operating, and the 2026 cohort is focused on EV battery reuse and recycling.
Ohio funds academic institutions directly through its Recycle Ohio grants. Colleges and universities are explicitly eligible for up to $300,000 for scrap tier civil engineering work. Eligible up to $300,000 for scrap tire civil engineering work, $200,000 for recycling equipment or organics diversion. The next cycle for that opens on September 14th. Colorado has moved roughly $25 million through its Recycling Resources Economic Opportunity Program since 2007, with universities named as eligible recipients.
Plus, there's the Front Range Waste Diversion Enterprise running $5 million grant rounds, and next cycle Colorado is alongside it. Washington has the Recycling Development Center in statute. This is a joint ecology and commerce operation that commissions university research directly. University of Washington's Evans School has done secondary market and priority studies for it. Western Washington University has done the recycling economic impact and equity analysis. Illinois funded a two-year materials management study through the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.
Minnesota funds circular textile economy work at the University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment through Minnesota Drive, a standing state appropriation. These are all states with some or no packaging EPR. Obviously, Colorado and Washington do have EPR, but they're also funding university research into exactly the questions EPR programs are looking to answer. They are building the evidence base either before the law or as the law is being passed. These states are generally just not going to be starting from zero if they do pass an EPR, or they're already investing a lot in the circular economy.
Understanding who funds academic research reveals why certain circular solutions get priority over others.
The reality is that not everything scales. I want to share a little bit about some of the walls or barriers that some of these programs hit. Most of the research does not make it out of the building where it's being researched. It's not a criticism of the researcher. It's the nature of research. The valley of death, if you will, is real, and the last three years have given us a very expensive demonstration of it. Brightmark paused its Indiana Plastics to Fuel plant this month after Chapter eleven. Multiple advanced recycling projects across the US. Europe has shut down in the last eighteen months.
I already have a whole episode on chemical recycling, but effectively these are technologies that maybe could have worked if they had scaled, but the economics weren't panning out. That leads to a tipping fee challenge. The tipping fees are ultimately what these technologies need to measure up against. It needs to be cheaper to recycle than to throw it into the landfill. 2024 National average landfill tipping fee was $62, but the average is hiding everything. In the Northeast, it's $80.67. In the Pacific, it's $72.88. In the South Central, it's $44.87. In Alaska, it's $124. In Kansas, it's $34.78.
Private landfills average much higher per ton than public landfills. There's about a 34% spread. If we look at recycling next to it, from the National Academy's 2024 study on municipal solid waste, North Carolina in 2023, it was roughly $260 to $300 a ton to recycle versus about $200 a ton to dispose. MRF processing alone runs $100 to $130 a ton in the Northeast. Commodity revenue swings from near zero to $150 a ton. It’s just more expensive, seemingly, to recycle than to throw it in the landfill.
State Surcharges And Landfill Diversion Economics
The competitiveness of circularity in this country is a function of what it costs to throw something away. It is not necessarily a function of how good the technology is. That's why the same recycling technology is a viable business in Massachusetts, but potentially a money pit in Alabama, where the tipping fees are much lower. Nothing about technology has changed. It is just that the disposal alternative is cheaper. What would it actually take? Raise the cost of disposal. That's the government participating in the economy of disposal.
Michigan is trying this right now. The governor's budget proposed raising the state landfill tipping surcharge from $0.36 a ton to $5 a ton, which would generate roughly 80 million a year for remediation. The rationale is partly that Michigan's Great Lakes neighbors average $5.25 a ton, and 19% of what Michigan buries comes from out of state. There are also landfill bans on specific materials, which are a blunt version of this cost-per-pound lever. I have also talked a lot about how a ban without a plan doesn't really work. There needs to be an alternative available if you're going to ban things from landfill.
EPR fees, which shift the cost of the municipality and waste onto the producer, which we've talked about at length, are another potential solution to this challenge. Wait for the capacity to run out, which regionally is closer than people think. The Northeast is running on somewhere like eight years of remaining landfill capacity. You'll start to have a scarcity challenge, and therefore the cost per pound might rise. They are also building new landfills. I do not know if that solution will really work.
The research gap I want to say out loud is that I was looking for a research program specifically studying landfill diversion economics. What price signal was at what level and in what region, might actually change the economics? What carbon price would do it? What disposal surcharge would do it? I couldn't really find one. If you know of some research out there that I missed, please share it with me. We have federal money for battery recycling chemistry. We have state money for material characterizations. We have corporate money for packaging design.
We have university money for polymer science. What I couldn't find was ongoing research programs answering questions like what is what did the economics need to be to force landfill diversion. If you fund research or sit on a board that does this, or you're a graduate student looking for a dissertation topic that could be a great question, or if you know someone who has thought a lot about this and is interested in being on the program, I'm happy to talk to them as well. I see it as an economic challenge and understand that, pun intended, a tipping point financially for landfill diversion to become the easy choice.
Connect with a student this week. Their unconditioned mindset might break you out of an industry rut. #Leadership
Close on a couple of things. One, I think the happy news is that the pipeline is real. There are a lot of students out there who are researching really incredible topics and solutions. We have examples of those solutions turning into something that can scale. Two kids with two students with a science fair idea are now in a manufacturing agreement. That's exciting. I shared a bunch of other examples of student ideas turning into something that has the potential to be a scalable innovation.
Two, I do think it's important for you, as you educate yourself in this space, to understand where the funding is coming from, on top of what the findings are, and not to say that the findings are necessarily skewed because of this funding, but just that maybe the scope of the topic might be directionally guided. Versus University, on Monday, you might have a lot more independence in where this research is focused. Three, I think what I've learned through this research is that the bottleneck isn't necessarily innovation.
We are producing better technology than our economy can absorb. A recycling process that fails in a state is likely due to the low tipping fee and not necessarily the quality of the innovation. That's why you see things succeeding in other states and not necessarily in some of these states with a super low tipping fee. What to watch potentially Michigan's landfill surcharge proposal. That could be a solid test on this price level. Also, keeping track of the Northeast capacity for landfill. If you're a producer, you may look to read the recycling needs assessments across the various states.
Reenergizing Industry Leaders Through Student Optimism
If you're a service provider, same thing. Look at the needs assessment, see where the needs are, and then that will be an indicator of where the funding will potentially follow. Embrace this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed mentality. Maybe go spend an hour with someone like a student who doesn't know what's impossible yet. I would encourage you to guest lecture, to judge a competition, or to just be available for a student to talk to you. Not necessarily because you'll teach them something, you probably will, but because you will then maybe be energized in a new way, or you may learn something, or you'll get a new perspective, and hopefully an energizing perspective.
Everyone in the industry carries a list of things that do not work in recycling. That list is important to know. Sometimes, if you're always thinking about things that do not work, your brain is trained in that direction. Students do not have that list of things that do not work yet. Being exposed to that can maybe break you out of a negative rut. Hopefully, you're encouraged by the research opportunities that are out there and the innovation we're hoping to see in the next 5 to 15 years. Embrace the excitement of students, not because they're naive, but because they do not think it's impossible yet. They think that there's still an opportunity for change. We know change is uncomfortable. Having that optimism and being reminded of that optimism can go a long way every once in a while.
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