Video spotlight: Ambercycle

Each year, humans produce 60 million tons of polyester. It starts out in our carpets, shoes, bottles, and clothes, but because it’s not recyclable, most of it ends up in the ocean. Shay Sethi, a Schmidt Marine Technology Partners’ grantee, thinks there’s a better way. In 2015, he co-founded a company called ambercycle that rescues textiles from landfills, extracts the polyester from them, and turns it into fiber to sell to clothing manufacturers—keeping microplastics out of the ocean and offering a sustainable solution for the fashion industry.