Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics are in the clothes that we wear, the packaging of our food and drinks, medical applications and more. They’re strong and light, and have revolutionized society. It’s recycling them that’s tricky: Traditional mechanical recycling involves melting and reusing plastic, which can lessen the quality — and when disposed of, particles create harmful effects.

Iowa State University engineers are working on solutions for cost-effective, quick, chemical recycling for plastics and textiles. Dhananjay (DJ) Dileep (‘21 chem engr master’s, ’24 Ph.D., pictured above), Research Scientist Michael Forrester, and Professor Eric Cochran cofounded ImPETus to scale chemical recycling technology solutions, which offer the promise of retaining quality in recycled materials.

“Imagine a Lego set,” DJ says. “You disassemble it, and you can reassemble every piece back and reintegrate it into the economy.”

DJ is passionate about sustainability, so when his Ph.D. research revealed a possible fix to the plastic problem, he thought “This technology needs to go out to the world.” ImPETus comes as an offshoot of that research.

“When engineering finds a solution, only then does it find its purpose,” he says. “I don’t want my thesis to just stay there in some dusty pile. I want it to make a difference.”

ImPETus’ first funding is $50,000 from Iowa State’s Innovation Acceleration Fund. The Startup Factory and CyBiz Lab provide entrepreneurial support. The vision is to increase the sustainability of PETs worldwide.

“Using plastics brings a lot of guilt in people,” DJ says. “I want to change that. We shouldn’t quite be guilty; we should try to use them in a guilt-free fashion.”