When he was only 12 years old, Alessandro Toni, CEO of Chemicle realized what he wanted to do in his life: magic. Well, not exactly. To the young boy’s eyes the chemistry experiment performed in class did look like magic, and unlike it’s less real “cousin”, Alessandro could actually pursue his dream and specialize in Chemistry.
“It was like fireworks. I have always been passionate about magic and I thought that Chemistry was the closest thing there was to magic in real life, so I decided to study that.”
Born and raised in the town of Ferrari, Maranello, our Italian entrepreneur-to-be felt lonely in the small town of just 15k people. As it often happens, that changed during his early school years, when he met Riccardo. Inseparable, the two went through school together and both chose to study Green Chemistry at the University of Bologna. Bound by their brotherhood and a passion for the same scientific discipline, these life-long friends decided to embark on a new endeavor together, they founded Chemicle.
The journey to becoming a founder was not so easy though. After graduating from University, Alessandro found a job at a local chemical firm, where he soon realized he did not like the repetitive, robotic tasks he was assigned. His extroverted and sociable personality didn’t match the type of activities he was assigned. The young man was way more interested in interacting with people, putting his brains to good use to develop new solutions with his rigor and logic. Out of that frustration, Alessandro and Riccardo decided to apply for a business case competition organized by their Alma Mater. After ranking in the top 30 among over 400 ideas, they felt confident enough to bring their case from paper to the lab. Even there, the first results of their experiments were very promising. Promising enough to convince Alessandro to quit his job and found a startup.
Chemicle stems from their passion “I’ve never thought I could study anything other than science”, — says the CEO — joined with their growing concern for the environment and the strain that human activities are putting onto it. Studying Green Chemistry, the two friends and colleagues had explored how to use vegetable waste to produce new materials, but the eureka moment came when Riccardo suggested that an alternative waste stream could be even more efficient: dairy waste.
Producing results in very little time and with very little money, the co-founders identified in their approach a winning alternative to traditional methods. With their catalyst technology, they were able to turn dairy waste into bioplastic precursors, cheaper and with fewer emissions with respect to current alternatives. Their “bioplastic building blocks” can be used to substitute oil-based molecules in plastic production, creating a more sustainable and fully recyclable bioplastic, derived from dairy waste.
When asked about what his sci-fi fantasy is, this laser-focused CEO has a very practical but pressing answer:
“Making the chemical industry 100% sustainable and zero waste, in order to solve the biggest problem we are facing right now: climate change”.
Alessandro and Riccardo have set out to do that and we look forward to following closely Chemicle’s journey.
Chemicle joined the RebelBio portfolio in our VIII program. Check out who the other nine were.
By Eleonora Mantovani
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