How a teenager’s nylon-recycling dream became a lucrative reality

Detailed summary

At just 18, Jacob Nathan turned a school science project into a £37.2m-backed business, developing technology to tackle one of fashion’s biggest environmental challenges

Like many teenagers, at 18, Jacob Nathan didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He had a passion for the environment and spent his teenage years protesting outside Parliament — sometimes skipping lessons to do so.

“Maybe the planet thanked me for it. I don’t think my maths grades did,” he jokes. A secondary school project at the American School in London involved hunting for microbes that could break down plastic. He found bacteria capable of living off plastic as their only food source and reckoned there might be a business in it. He spent his gap year deciding on a plan. It turned into a London-based company with big ambitions to make our clothing industry more circular.

One of the world’s thorniest waste problems is what to do with the clothes and the plastics within them that can’t easily be recycled. Nathan’s company, Epoch Biodesign, founded in 2019, could have the answer. Epoch employs 54 people in London and 58 in Spain. It’s backed by the likes of Inditex , owner of Zara, and sportswear brand Lululemon, and has raised more than £37.2 million.

“Maybe the planet thanked me for skipping school to protest — I don’t think my maths grades did”

Despite his parents thinking Nathan’s gap year was a diversion before he went to university (he decided to decline his place at University of Chicago to study biochemistry and economics), it’s become a full-time business. The firm’s research operation is in an underground facility beneath an office building at 10 Finsbury Square, near Moorgate station.

Nathan calls London “an awesome place to be building the business”, pointing to its strong investors and ability to attract global talent. And that talented team is busy developing enzymes — proteins that super charge the speed of chemical reactions — which are capable of breaking nylon back into its constituent parts, which can then be used to manufacture new nylon.

Their first target is nylon 66, a plastic found in everything from sportswear to car airbags.

But Epoch…

Tink…

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