Romania start-up lets companies subscribe to ocean cleanups
Sorina Uleia spends every summer on the Romanian coast, where she has seen marine plastic pollution in the Black Sea worsen every year. With over 20 years’ experience in tech innovation and sustainability, she saw a gap in how this issue was being addressed since existing initiatives to map the plastic value chain were fragmented, data-poor and disconnected.
Her start-up, Recycllux, emerged as a way to bring together the technologies Uleia knew well, alongside a decision-making platform focused on marine protection. “Around 12 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans annually and this is projected to triple by 2040. The production, consumption and discarding of plastic is often done with little regard for where it ends up. The idea became a mission: to give authorities and companies a practical, verifiable way to protect the seas,” Uleia adds.
Recycllux’s technology uses proprietary AI models applied to satellite data to detect plastic accumulation zones at sea, giving a more accurate view than traditional monitoring methods. Once marine plastic accumulation is detected, an intervention is created on Recycllux’s online platform. These hotspots trigger coordinated actions: waste is collected by local fishing vessels, accredited NGOs handle material sorting, and recycling partners process the material. The entire operation is coordinated digitally and funded by companies’ subscriptions.
Blockchain technology is “the backbone of Recycllux’s traceability and accountability system,” says Uleia. Every step of Recycllux’s interventions – from collection at sea to sorting, recycling, or repurposing – is recorded on-chain, thereby creating a tamper-proof, verifiable record of the cleanup and allowing for payments to be made once each stakeholder completes their role in the process. For local fishing communities, this means a new income stream during off-seasons. Recycllux does not own ships or recycling plants – it is the software layer that connects corporate stakeholders seeking to offset their plastic footprint with existing local cleanup capacity.
Recycllux’s clients are companies and public authorities who need to demonstrate credible, verifiable environmental action or who are directly responsible for marine ecosystem management. The start-up works with industries whose plastic footprints are increasingly scrutinised (such as fast-moving consumer goods, beverages, cosmetics, retail) and under mounting regulatory and consumer pressure to address their plastic impact. Uleia is keen to make companies more accountable and provide them with tools to fund verified cleanups, track their environmental impact and embed these actions into their sustainability and compliance reporting.
Romanian cosmetics company Techir became Recycllux’s first pilot customer and together the two companies co-created relevant sustainability KPIs and enabled Techir to receive fully verified reporting on the volume and composition of plastic removed, CO2 equivalent avoided and the fate of each waste stream. Uleia says the collaboration was meaningful, “because it validated the model and demonstrated that companies are ready for a new standard of environmental accountability – one grounded in data, transparency, and measurable outcomes.”
Its first end-to-end pilot intervention in the Black Sea led to the start-up being named a Blue Earth 100 Winner, highlighting Recycllux as one of the most promising ocean-impact innovations globally.
Headquartered in Bucharest, Recycllux operates with field teams and partners along Romania’s Black Sea coast. The company is now establishing a subsidiary in Malta, which will serve as a hub to expand operations across the Mediterranean. Unlike the Black Sea, the region offers opportunities to maintain operations year-round, including the winter months. In the future, Recycllux would like to work with clients to make new products from the recovered plastic. The start-up also plans to align its methodology with the standards needed to issue certified plastic and carbon credits.
Uleia believes that regulatory momentum is pushing companies towards verifiable environmental action and marine ecosystems are increasingly becoming a priority in the EU’s climate agenda, creating a clear opportunity to expand. “The gap we address is fundamental. However, the barriers are equally real: marine environments differ significantly from one area to another and expanding requires new data, new partners and new operational ecosystems,” she adds.
Nevertheless, these challenges are exactly why Recycllux exists – to build the technological and operational infrastructure that allows marine protection to scale. As Uleia observes, “Climate action increasingly requires capabilities that neither the public sector nor traditional industry can deliver alone. Start-ups bring the speed, creativity and technical innovation needed to rethink outdated systems. Businesses bring scale, capital, and the ability to institutionalise solutions. When these two forces align, change becomes faster and more durable.”
Recyclleux completed the Black Sea ClimAccelerator in 2022, funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The start-up has since signed on Climate KIC as a strategic investor and joins our portfolio of nearly 60 climate start-ups. For more information on our accelerator programmes, visit our Climate Entrepreneurship page.