Challenging Texas’ plastic industry
One of the world’s biggest challenges is what to do with municipal garbage and old plastic.
Landfills are filling up, recyclers in China do not want our plastic, and COVID-19 encourages us to use even more disposable products than ever. But after years or experimentation, a team of scientists and entrepreneurs at an Israeli kibbutz have developed a chemical process that turns garbage into recyclable plastic.
UBQ Materials diverts unsorted sold waste from city landfills, removes metals and minerals, mulches it with old plastic, and puts it through a chemical reactor. The process extrudes a thermoplastic that companies can use to make durable products, such as decking material, coolers or recycling bins.
“We’re coming with a new material to an industry that is very conventional,” company founder Tato Bigio told me. “Our material will work with all (conventional plastic) polymers, without changing processes, without changing molds, without changing anything.”
If the new form of plastic gains a foothold, it will forever change the Texas plastic resin industry, which is the largest in the world.
German automaker Daimler and MacDonalds are using UBQ material, and other companies are experimenting. To commercialize the company, Bigio and his board of directors hired a new CEO, Mike Thaman, who in April retired after 11 years leading Owens Corning, a building materials company.
UBQ’s process is proprietary, and Bigio is not sharing any secrets. But simply put, the company collects solid waste from a city and analyzes the contents. UBQ’s process requires 50 percent to 80 percent organic material, such as pizza boxes, coffee grounds, toothpicks and dirty diapers.
The company then removes any metal or glass — valuable recyclable materials — before mixing it with plastic waste and grinding it. A sickening pulp enters the reactor, out comes a plastic resin-like substance.
“We blend batches of waste so that we always get a consistent end product, and we can guarantee to our customers that they will always get the same material,” Bigio said.
UBQ’s pellets will not produce a clear plastic bottle, but they can be made in any color and used for injection molding, extrusion, compression molding and 3D printing. The company has made shopping carts, hangers, pipes, panels, bricks, trays and automobile parts.
Bigio says UBQ has a sustainable business plan. Cities pay UBQ the same fees they would pay a landfill to take their trash. That allows Bigio to sell UBQ material at the same price as conventional raw plastics while still making a profit.
“We can process a lot of waste
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Thermoplastic pellets by UBQ can be mixed with resins to reduce the carbon footprint of virgin plastic products or used on their own.
and produce a lot of end material, what we need is demand for that endmaterial,” he said.
Customers can use UBQ by itself or blend it with conventional plastics, including polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC and polystyrene. By blending UBQ material with petroleum-based plastics, companies can claim their products fight climate change.
Plastic manufacturing emits between four and seven pounds of carbon dioxide for every pound of resin produced. UBQ prevents greenhouse gas emissions by diverting trash from landfills, where organic waste rots and produces methane.
UBQ pellets offset 15 times their weight in carbon dioxide, according to Quantis, a specialist firm in environmental impact assessments. By making UBQ pellets 10 percent of their products, manufacturers can claim they are carbon neutral.
UBQ’s pilot plant in Israel only makes 5,000 tons of material a year. But the company is considering expanding and building a plant in Virginia that will produce 100,000 tons of material a year from 150,000 tons of garbage. Bigio wants to open at least five plants in the United States.
“Rather than have one plant that produces material for the entire world, we think it is better to have smaller plants that use local waste in different countries and help these countries solve some of their waste issues,” he said. “Texas is a place where we will definitely have a plant. It has a very big thermoplastics industry.”
The question for the plastics industry is whether executives see UBQ material as a method to make products more sustainable or as competition. Companies can blend UBQ material into their conventional plastics, or freeze the company out by lowering prices thanks to low natural gas prices.
Last year, Dow CEO Jim Fitterling promised the world his company would fight climate change and boost plastic recycling to reduce the waste poisoning the world’s water supplies. More than 35 companies have raised $1.1 billion to clean up the plastic industry.
UBQ Materials could help those companies achieve their goals if they are willing to share the market. The world will watch to see if the plastic industry is sincere about solving their problems while reducing landfill waste at the same time.