Signal · Polystyrene circularity routesPrepared for AmSty · September 2026
The best number on this chart is measuring foam, not food. Five patents in 731 claim food contact.
Regenyx closed on 30 April 2024 after five years and six million pounds. Your target is 30% recycled content in food-grade PS by 2030, and no plant is running today. So the question is which route you restart with. This is how fast each one is improving.
Six PS circularity routes · all 731 mechanical-route patents read in full
The decision
Which route to restart with · after Regenyx closed April 2024
The clock
30% recycled content in food-grade PS by 2030 · no plant running today
The map
Six routes to circular polystyrene, measured on maturity and improvement rate.
The high/low TIR bands split on the median improvement rate of these six routes (13.8%/yr) — a judgement relative to this domain, not a fixed threshold. The maturity split is TRL 5, the end of validation in a relevant environment. Pyrolysis is a boundary reference: it covers mixed plastic waste, not PS alone. Source: GetFocus platform export · September 2026.
What the signal shows
Your best route, up close731 patents
Mechanical is top of the chart. It is a foam business.
We read all 731 patents in it: half the waste going in is foam, only 6% is food-service PS. 37% of the work is just making foam smaller — another 8% turns it back into foam. The biggest owner is a foam maker (Sekisui Kasei, 41), and 27% of the field is filed by individuals, not companies.
The gap that matters5 in 731
Five patents in 731 claim food contact. One since 2022.
252 state a non-food use outright; only 18 report any number for cleaning the plastic. Your 2030 target is 30% recycled content in food-grade PS — almost nobody is working on that.
Who is pulling it19 patents
A tyre company files more here than any PS maker.
Michelin holds 19 patents across the three monomer routes and is a top-two new filer in all three — no polystyrene producer is. They want styrene to make rubber: a buyer, not a rival.
Who holds the patents
Patent families per route — and each route’s biggest holder.
Source: GetFocus platform export · September 2026
Pyrolysis is a boundary reference — it covers mixed plastic waste, not PS alone. The orange bars are the routes AmSty has run: mechanical’s 730 families are led by a foam maker (Sekisui Kasei), and the biggest holders in dissolution are electronics companies — nobody owns the food-grade ground yet.
For AmSty
Nothing in polystyrene improves fast: 17% here against 40 to 44% in the fields next door — so waiting costs you less than it would anywhere else. But the route with the best number is solving a different problem, and the food-grade work barely exists, which also means nobody has taken that ground yet. Two useful facts: the heat route you already proved is the slowest on the chart, and the company pulling the monomer routes forward is a tyre maker — which makes it a customer.
The method, in one minute
What is TIR?
TIR — the Technology Improvement Rate — measures how fast a technology gets better each year, computed from global patent data. Not who is filing, or how much: how fast the route is actually moving. Historically, the fastest-improving technology always wins.
Signal 1 · Cycle time
How many years between one generation of inventions and the next.
Methodology co-developed with MIT — 30 years of peer-reviewed research.
What we could look into next
Three questions this teaser opened.
01
The five
Five patents claim food contact. Who holds them and what do they actually cover?
02
Foam against food
Split the set in two. Is the food half improving at a different speed?
03
Michelin
What do their 19 patents claim, and would they buy your monomer?
Pick one, or choose a new topic. We run it as a full proof of concept for you, at no cost.
A free proof of concept, on your question
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The five food-contact patents, foam against food, or Michelin — any of them run as a full proof of concept, at no cost, walked through with our analysts.
