Wessel van der Woude

What is your job at Veridis?

'I am Chief Business Officer, so I deal with everything that is not technical. We recently started selling the test we do with our lab setup. I also have to raise funding and handle the marketing of the product. With the test we will now be selling, we can measure all types of plastic within four hours on a 20-gram scale. In the coming months, we will take the next step: selling the test system. But then we must first turn it into a commercial product together with a development partner. That will take another 12 months.'

How does it work?

'We take a sample from a recycling stream. We put part of it into our device. That device heats to 200 degrees (soon to 300), we cool it and heat it again. Certain energy is released depending on the material. Based on that temperature, you can read which fractions of which type of plastic are in a sample. In the first flow, the material is so heterogeneous that there is a large margin of error. The second time, you get a smooth line, then if all goes well, we will soon be able to say how long the polymer chain is still and how good quality the plastic is still.'

How will this improve recycling?

'The recycler can earn more from recyclate. With our method you also have an analysis at the end of the process, so he can optimize it forward. He can skip the processing step, so it's better quality at the point of sale. So you can make commercial plastic waste more valuable. We can now distinguish the most selling plastics well. Eventually we want to be able to see every type of plastic down to the fraction. We can also do it for other types of materials, but plastic is the most interesting right now.'