High Tech Binders: Paving the (bicycle) road to a greener future
Startup High Tech Binders replaces polluting bitumen with circular biopolymer made from wastewater.
Published on July 4, 2025
© High Tech Binders
Bart, co-founder of Media52 and Professor of Journalism oversees IO+, events, and Laio. A journalist at heart, he keeps writing as many stories as possible.
At this year’s HighTechXL XL Day, Marc Boomaars introduced High Tech Binders with a mission that could change the road beneath our feet, literally. “We’ve all used a road, and most likely it was produced with bitumen,” Boomaars began. “That black, sticky, smelly stuff is a byproduct of crude oil, and a climate problem.”
While asphalt may seem inert and harmless, it hides an inconvenient truth: although bitumen makes up only 5% of asphalt by volume, it accounts for 94% of the material’s CO₂ emissions. “Every ton of bitumen creates 0.4 tons of CO₂,” Boomaars explained. “And with oil refining becoming more efficient, the availability and quality of bitumen is dropping. The industry is stuck, and it has no real alternative.”
Eco-Bind
That’s where High Tech Binders comes in. Their innovation, called Eco-Bind, replaces 30% of traditional bitumen with a fully circular biopolymer sourced from wastewater. “That’s where the magic starts,” said Boomaars. “We gain the biopolymer from waste streams, and we’re working with TNO to scale this up. Our long-term goal is 100% bitumen replacement.”
External Content
This content is from youtube. To protect your privacy, it'ts not loaded until you accept.
The potential is massive. The European bitumen market alone is worth billions. “It’s a huge volume market,” Boomaars emphasized. “And our solution is highly scalable; there’s a lot of road in the world.”
So, where to begin? Bicycle paths.
According to Boomaars, choosing Dutch cycling paths as the company’s beachhead market is strategic: “The road construction industry is very traditional. Starting with bicycle paths reduces the perceived risk. These are smaller-scale projects, not massive Rijkswaterstaat tenders, which helps us get a foot in the door. And, importantly, there’s room for pricing, so we can create margin in the early phase.”
Lowering the barrier
EcoBite comes with another advantage: road builders don’t need to change their existing equipment. “That’s huge,” said Boomaars. “You can keep using the machines and processes you already have. That lowers the barrier to adoption significantly.”
High Tech Binders isn’t building this road alone. The startup is collaborating with several partners: Breedon in Ireland for lab testing, KWS in Eindhoven for test runs, and bitumen blender OOMS for aging tests, “which, by the way, looked great,” Boomaars noted. They’ve also secured a guaranteed supply and price agreement for their biopolymer base material.
With a founding team that includes TNO, HighTechXL, and four seasoned professionals in deep tech, business, and international marketing, the startup is now gearing up for the next step. “We’re looking for €850,000 in investment to move forward in 2025,” Boomaars concluded. “And we’re calling on anyone with strong networks in the European road construction industry to help us scale. We’re ready.”