Atlas Building Composites, a spinout of MIT, is on a mission to address both problems with a single solution. The company has developed an AI-powered robotic manufacturing platform capable of turning single-use plastics into durable building materials. The company emerged from MIT HAUS, a research effort in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering that's short for 'Home Architecture for Universal Sustainability.' Atlas uses waterless plastic recycling and large-scale composite additive manufacturing technology to make parts like home foundations, decks, and trusses for walls, floors, and roofs. 'Our mission is to convert waste plastic pollution into durable composites to build 1 billion homes,' says Atlas chair and co-founder A.J. Perez '13, MNG '14, PhD '23, who is also an MIT research scientist. 'You can't divorce these things from each other. We're not here just to build homes, and we're not here just to recycle plastic. The conventional way of building homes involves cutting...
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