Nesta Impact Investments backs tech ventures working in areas aligned with Nesta’s 2030 impact goals. Nesta’s sustainable future mission aims to reduce UK household carbon emissions by 28% by 2030. We invest in businesses that support the green transition and Nesta’s goal. Nesta Impact Investments is delighted to have invested in DEScycle alongside lead investor Business Growth Fund, as well as Vorwerk Ventures, Cisco Investments, and Kadmos Capital. 

DEScycle has created an end-to-end process to recover and recycle metals. Their initial focus will be recycling metals from electronic waste (e-waste), which includes the printed circuit boards (PCBs), components & chips from discarded computers, phones, and consumer electronics. DEScycle have also applied their technology to end-of-life hardware in data centers. Achieving this involves commercialising deep eutectic solvents, a new class of chemistry which was invented at the University of Leicester. DEScycle’s technology allows for the selective extraction of metals, like gold and copper, from e-waste. These metals are really important for the energy transition, and DEScycle has refined the process for recovering a number of precious and other metals.

DEScycle technology has the potential to improve the availability and reduce the capital cost of low-emission recycling of metals which are critical in building the hardware driving electrification and decarbonisation, including grid tech, batteries and consumer devices. With their first use case of e-waste, DEScycle’s focus will be on extracting copper, which is known as the “metal of electrification”, as well as precious metals such as gold and silver which are used in the electronics industry. As DEScycle is a UK-based company, with their first commercial plant to be built in the north of England, they will have a strong impact in supporting the sustainable recycling of UK e-waste. 

UK households produce more than 400,000 tonnes of e-waste each year, which is 9kg per capita, with only 31.2% of e-waste currently recycled using highly energy intensive and polluting smelters. Similarly, UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs) produce 1.6 million tonnes of e-waste each year. DEScycle can therefore support both emission reduction when electronics are thrown away, and also provide sources of low-carbon metals to reduce the embodied emissions of new electronic products used by both households and SMEs.

This investment round will enable DEScycle to scale up its e-waste recycling applications. It will help DEScycle to expand its portfolio of metals it can recover from e-waste using its deep eutectic solvent technology as well as explore other recycling applications, such as mining waste and battery recycling.