Microplastics are plastic particles less than five millimetres in size that are produced through the production and use of clothing and textiles. According to Matter, up to 700,000 microplastic fibres are released from washing machines and into waterways following each laundry cycle. An estimated 171 trillion microplastic particles are present in the sea, with suggestions that microplastics are harmful to the environment, as well as human and animal health.
Matter is working with domestic and commercial laundry appliance manufacturers to integrate its technology into their products ahead of incoming French legislation requiring new domestic and commercial washing machines to be fitted with microfibre filters by January 2025.
Matter is also partnering with textile brands and manufacturers to help them better understand and prevent pollution from microfibre fragmentation in the textile manufacturing process.
“Matter as a business is the brand behind brands,” said Adam Root, founder and CEO of Matter. “We are working with some of the biggest players in the field in the laundry industry which will enable us to make the biggest impact and deliver our technology at scale.
Root continued: “We are an ingredients company that aims to support the big washing machine brands with emerging legislation through implementing our external and/or internal microplastic filtration technology to their machines.”
With this funding, Matter will leverage its core technology to further develop scalable solutions capable of stopping microplastic and other micropollutant emissions from domestic, industrial and municipal water systems. The solution will capture the microplastics that would otherwise end in sewage sludge to be used as fertilizer or incinerated.
“We're in early-stage development in industrial applications and already working on a couple projects in the pre-consumer textile manufacture space,” said Root. “The $10m investment will go towards supporting the acceleration of the industrial side of the business.”
The round was led by S2G Ventures, and SOUNDWaves. Kate Danaher of S2G Ventures and Katherine Keating of SOUNDWaves will join Matter’s Board of Directors. Additional investment came from Regeneration.VC, and Katapult Ocean.
“Matter’s micro-filtration technology is class-leading and represents a crucial defence against the continuous flow of microplastic pollution from our homes, workplaces and built environments” said Katherine Keating, managing partner at SOUNDwaves. “Legislation is inevitable given the ecological and health impacts of microplastic pollution that are becoming better understood every day, and we are already working with Matter to realise the commercial relationships required to bring this impact to industrial scales, mitigating thousands of tonnes of plastic materials entering our environment every year from textile production and industrial wastewater processes.”
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