Enzymes to tackle rare-earth recovery
Australian startup aims to retrieve materials from electronic waste before they end up in landfill.
Samsara Eco has outlined an ambitious plan to expand its AI-driven enzyme-based recycling platform beyond plastics and into the critical minerals sector.
The goal is to retrieve materials from electronic waste that would otherwise end up in landfills, according to the startup which is based near Canberra in the NSW town of Jerrabomberra.
The company's tech is currently focused on breaking down plastics found in textiles and packaging into virgin-grade building blocks which can be reused indefinitely in a circular loop.
If Samsara Eco can successfully apply this tech to critical minerals, it could significantly boost supply, according to founder & CEO Paul Riley. As he recently told the Wall Street Journal, the startup would initially focus on rare earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium which are used as alloys in high-performance magnets.
“Rare-earth metals represents one of the biggest geopolitical challenges that exists in the world today. Supply-chain security and sovereign risk are areas that we think we can play in,” Riley said last week in a social post.
The global squeeze
High-tech manufacturing and the clean energy transition rely on these rare earth elements, with access to them becoming a major source of geopolitical friction.
The Australian government recently released details of a $1.2 billion Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve to secure the supply of key minerals considered vital for both national security and the economy.
It said the reserve would support Australia’s collaboration with international partners including the US, Japan, Republic of Korea, Europe, Canada and the UK, with the aim of diversifying critical minerals supply chains.
Against this backdrop, Riley said, he sees this market as being as much about national security as it is about environmental circularity: “The potential here to open new critical mineral reserves and address one of the defining sovereign risks of our generation is astronomical.”
“We've already developed engineered proteins ... that can recover critical minerals from waste. It's early, but the potential is extraordinary.”
Riley also outlined plans in WSJ to raise further capital to expand into critical minerals but emphasised the company would continue to scale its plastics operation.
Having pioneered recycled nylon and polyester products in collaboration with global activewear brand Lululemon since 2024, the company has plans to construct a dedicated circular nylon 6,6 plant in 2028.
Riley said the company's proprietary AI is capable of much more than just cleaning up the fashion industry. “We mine, we refine, we throw away – on repeat. The result is structural fragility – economic, environmental and geopolitical,” he said.
“There’s no denying it – this is a planetary problem. But in the current climate, it’s far more than that. Circularity is an economic imperative.”
By viewing enzymes as "nature's catalysts" that can be precisely tuned by AI, Samsara Eco aims to dismantle the linear system that exposes nations to volatility and strategic dependence, according to Riley.
“As the world becomes increasingly complicated and the value of raw materials becomes clear, the drive for circularity can't be contained to just plastics and textiles,” he said.
“We've already developed engineered proteins – which enzymes are a subset of – that can recover critical minerals from waste. It's early, but the potential is extraordinary.”
Samsara Eco uses a proprietary AI platform to engineer specialised proteins and enzymes. These biological catalysts act at a molecular level to break the chemical bonds of complex materials. Unlike traditional recycling, which often degrades material quality, this biocatalytic approach reduces waste to its original, virgin-grade monomers. This technology has to date been applied to plastic but the company says it could also be extended to the recovery of finite resources. By engineering new classes of proteins, Samsara hopes to extract critical minerals from end-of-life products, providing a biological alternative to carbon-intensive traditional mining and reducing the sovereign risk associated with global mineral supply chains.
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Amanda Bryan
Amanda Bryan
