NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK / ACCESS Newswire / December 31, 2025 / At first glance, the reaction is predictable. Gloves? Disposable rubber gloves used for minutes and discarded by the billions. The immediate question almost asks itself: why bother?

That reaction is exactly why SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) is focused here.

The expansion of SMX's molecular marking and digital identity platform into industrial rubber gloves is not about monitoring individual products or pretending that gloves are suddenly recyclable. It is about addressing the structural failure that has kept entire categories of material anonymous, unaccountable, and permanently excluded from any meaningful recovery or verification framework.

Gloves are not ignored because they are unimportant. They are ignored because once they are used, no one can safely or reliably decide what to do with them.

The Real Problem Isn't Gloves, It's Anonymity

Industrial gloves fail every recovery conversation for the same reason. Once discarded, they lose their identity. Latex, nitrile, neoprene, blended compounds, all become indistinguishable after use. Add the possibility of biological or chemical exposure, and recyclers are forced into a defensive posture.

Without verified information, the only safe assumption is the worst case.

That is why gloves are landfilled or incinerated at scale. Not because recycling demand does not exist, but because uncertainty creates risk, liability, and cost. No downstream operator can confidently determine what they are handling, where it came from, or how it should be processed.

SMX is not trying to override that reality. It is removing the uncertainty that created it.

Identity Comes Before Any Outcome

SMX embeds invisible molecular markers directly into rubber compounds during manufacturing. These markers persist through use, handling, washing, shredding, and downstream processing. Even after a glove has been used, its material identity remains verifiable.

That does not mean every glove should be recycled. It means every glove can be classified.

Classification is the missing step that most sustainability conversations skip. When material identity persists, waste streams can be segregated based on verified attributes rather than assumptions. Decisions become informed instead of precautionary. The system gains the ability to choose appropriate outcomes instead of defaulting to disposal.

That's important. You cannot recover what you cannot verify. And this verification isn't purely about recycling.

Safer Disposal Is Still Progress

One of the fastest ways this story gets misunderstood is by assuming success only counts if gloves are reused or recycled. That is not how industrial waste works, and it is not how SMX is defining success.

In many cases, the correct outcome for used gloves will still be destruction. Incineration is not a failure when it is intentional, controlled, and documented. What changes with traceable material is not the endpoint, but the quality of the decision that leads there.

When gloves carry verified identity, waste streams can be segregated properly, handled according to known risk profiles, and processed with confidence rather than blanket caution. Institutions reduce liability. Compliance reporting shifts from estimates to proof. Waste handlers stop treating everything as worst-case by default.

Accountability does not require reuse. It requires clarity.

Where Recovery Becomes Possible

Once identity clarification persists beyond first use, another door quietly opens. Not all glove waste is created equal. Gloves used in food processing, manufacturing clean rooms, and certain industrial environments often have well-defined exposure profiles, yet they are treated no differently than medical waste because there has never been a way to prove they are different.

Material-level identity changes that dynamic. When composition and origin are verifiable, selective recovery becomes feasible. Certain streams can be downcycled into secondary rubber applications. Others can be routed into certified non-medical reuse pathways. Decisions stop being theoretical and start being operational.

Just as important, identity creates feedback. Manufacturers gain visibility into which formulations survive recovery and which do not, informing redesign rather than marketing claims. This is how circularity actually forms, deliberately and grounded in evidence.

What's Actually Being Built

The upcoming pilot programs bring together manufacturers, major end-users, waste handlers, and recyclers to validate these workflows under real operating conditions. The objective is not to promise universal recovery, but to prove that identity embedded at the material level survives reality and improves downstream decision-making without disrupting existing systems.

Gloves are not unique in their disposability. They are simply one of the clearest examples of how anonymity has limited accountability across entire classes of material.

SMX is not tracking gloves. It is removing the condition that forces waste to disappear without consequence. Once material stops being anonymous, every downstream option improves. Disposal becomes intentional. Recovery becomes selective. Redesign becomes informed. Claims become provable.

Gloves may be short-lived, but the shift they represent is not. Circular systems do not begin with recycling; they begin with knowing exactly what is in hand. SMX provides the platform that makes that possible. Uniquely so.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring, and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

This information contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and assumptions regarding future events involving SMX (NASDAQ: SMX), its technologies, its partnership activities, and its development of molecular marking systems for recycled PET and other materials. Forward-looking statements are not historical facts. They involve risks, uncertainties, and factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Forward looking statements in this editorial include, but are not limited to, its announced capital facility and its terms, expectations regarding the integration of SMX's molecular markers into U.S. recycling markets; the potential for FDA-compliant markers to enable recycled PET to enter food-grade and other regulated applications; the scalability of SMX solutions across diverse global supply chains; anticipated adoption of identity-based verification systems by manufacturers, recyclers, regulators, or brand owners; the potential economic impact of turning recycled plastics into tradeable or monetizable assets; the expected performance of SMX's Plastic Cycle Token or other digital verification instruments; and the belief that molecular-level authentication may influence pricing, compliance, sustainability reporting, or financial strategies used within the plastics sector.

These forward-looking statements are also subject to assumptions regarding regulatory developments, market demand for authenticated recycled content, the pace of corporate adoption of traceability technology, global economic conditions, supply chain constraints, evolving environmental policies, and general industry behavior relating to sustainability commitments and recycling mandates. Risks include, but are not limited to, changes in FDA or international regulatory standards; technological challenges in large-scale deployment of molecular markers; competitive innovations from other companies; operational disruptions in recycling or plastics manufacturing; fluctuations in pricing for virgin or recycled plastics; and the broader economic conditions that influence capital investment and industrial activity.

Detailed risk factors are described in SMX's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These statements speak only as of the date of publication. SMX undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events, changes in circumstances, or new information, except as required by applicable law.

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SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited