Plastics Recycling Platform “Cirplus”

The genesis for Hamburg start-up Cirplus was an unpleasant experience co-founder Christian Schiller had while sailing in the Caribbean, when his boat got stuck in plastic ocean waste.

“It was just shocking,” said Schiller. “At that point, I hit on a plan to get to the bottom of the structural causes of the plastics crisis on my return to Germany. The idea was to come up with an entrepreneurial means of fighting the causes.”

Together with IT expert Volkan Bilici, Schiller developed the online platform for recyclates, or recovered raw materials.

Cirplus matches potential buyers with suppliers from a pool. Cirplus is currently working with 30 companies in the recycling and plastics industry to develop an AI-based algorithm for the platform. At present they have around 90 clients from 15 different countries