Nylon 6 is one of the world’s most widely used plastics. Its balance of performance and value has driven huge growth across performance textiles, carpets, automotive components, industrial and high-barrier packaging.

Unlike many plastics, nylon 6 has a history of recycling. Mechanical recycling has been used for decades, and more recently chemical recycling technologies have emerged to break nylon 6 back down into monomers for reuse in virgin-quality materials.

However, scale has exposed the limits of current solutions. Mechanical recycling degrades performance which severely limits applications; while chemical recycling requires pure feedstocks with limited availability, and processing involves high energy use which drives up cost and emissions.

As a result, the vast majority of nylon 6 still follows a linear path from fossil resources to waste. To unlock true circularity, nylon 6 needs a low-carbon recycling pathway that can handle real-world waste streams at industrial scale. Epoch's breakthrough enzymatic technology will take nylon 6 from 'recyclable' to 'recycled'.