Waste no more

Wherever people are, waste accumulates. It’s a perennial problem for which many different solutions have been devised over the centuries. Now, a cleantech company called UBQ has developed an approach that had not yet been tried. It has created technology to convert unsorted household waste into a thermoplastic composite material that over time, can replace plastic according to co-CEO Tato Bigio. Seriously.

The idea came to Jack ‘Tato’ Bigio, co-founder and co-CEO of UBQ, well over a decade ago, inspired by research being done by Oded Shoseyov, a well-known professor in the field of plant molecular biology, protein engineering and nano-biotechnology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

“We met some 12-14 years ago,” said Bigio. ”We were working on a way to create a kind of building brick from heated and compressed waste. A product that could be used in pavements or even walls.”
The idea of being able to make a new material from household waste took hold. “He thought it could be an interesting opportunity to create a new thermoplastic material by processing waste using advanced chemistry lower temperatures,” said Bigio.
Household waste, he explained, consists for the most part of organic materials such as food residues, cardboard, paper and garden trimmings, . After sorting out the metals, glass and other inert materials, what is left is approximately 80-85 per cent organic matter and 20-15 per cent mixed plastics.
“What we wondered was, what would happen if we broke the organic material down into its natural components, such as sugars – fructose, sucrose, cellulose -together with lignin other fibres, collagens from chicken and fish bones; basically, natural components at the particulate level,” he said. “All the particulates that are the building blocks of anything organic. Could we create a matrix out of these, create a new material that did not exist before?”

A steep learning curve
The idea was just the first step. Funds were needed to take the project further. Yet to interest investors in the idea, Bigio first needed something to show them. In late 2012, he found an industrial site near a source of municipal waste where he set up a prototype process—something easier said than done, he said. It was the start of UBQ.

The early days were a steep learning curve, said Bigio, and it took some time before such essential steps as the need to thoroughly remove all metal and minerals and other complicated parameters were understood. However, once the principle was established, it then became a question of mastering the process.

“The difficulty was that in the beginning, we were talking to investors who did not understand what we were doing. It became obvious that we needed an investor who understood plastics, so we started to target our efforts at this group,” said Bigio, who, strictly speaking, also did not have a background in plastics, despite having previously been involved in the realisation of $400 million polypropylene plant as a part of a petrochemical expansion.
“And then I met Albert Douer, whose family owns companies in the plastics processing industry. Initially, he was sceptical but when he saw the prototype, he understood the mechanics and the potential chemistry involved in upscaling the process. He saw just how impactful this development could be. And today, happily, Douer is the chairman and co-CEO of UBQ.”

Much work was needed to determine how to upscale the process, as well as to understand the economics and value involved, i.e., whether this could be turned efficiently and economically into something usable. Over the years, Bigio assembled a team of scientists and other experts to overcome the process challenges and material issues.

“We learned a lot,” said Bigio. “And all throughout we kept going, hoping that during this development we would cross all the bridges of problems that we would encounter - because we were still very taken by the idea that this would maybe help to change the world”.

Proprietary Conversion Process
The patented UBQ conversion process begins with the receipt of residual municipal solid waste; everything from food residues and mixed plastics to cardboard, paper, and even dirty diapers, that would have otherwise been sent to landfill or incineration. Metals and minerals, which have high recyclability, are removed and sent over to traditional recycling streams. All that remains is transformed into UBQ – so nothing goes to waste.
The sole feedstock to the UBQ conversion process is household waste, which is largely comprised of organic materials. UBQ’s waste conversion technology breaks down the organic matter into its basic particulate constructs—lignin, cellulose, fibres, and sugars—and then reassembles them into a matrix. Residual plastics present in the waste stream melt and get mixed into the matrix to create a homogeneous and consistent composite thermoplastic material.
Odour is not a problem, Bigio contended, as the waste is still relatively fresh, and decomposition has not yet fully set in.
Unlike conventional chemical recycling systems, which utilize high temperatures to break apart the polymer bonds of synthetic plastics, UBQ uses significantly lower temperatures and process energy.

“We can’t use high temperatures because we would burn the waste - the fibre, the cellulose - instead of breaking it down and we’d have charcoal instead of UBQ,” Bigio pointed out. We typically don't talk too much about the process,  but what I can say is that most of the process is due to a series of reactions at different stages of a complex process.”

Interestingly, UBQ technology can also be used to convert difficult-to-recycle plastics, he added.

What is UBQ?
The process creates a thermoplastic composite that is not plastic. So, what is it? What can it be used for? How is it used?
Bigio: “UBQ is not a polymer, although some of its constituent parts themselves are polymers. UBQ is an alternative bio-based plastic. If it were a polymer, we wouldn’t be able to mix it with, for example, polyolefins: mixing polymers together doesn’t work, as they wouldn’t ‘stick’ together. Instead, think for example, of glass. It is a single material, created from different ingredients. In exactly the same way, we have created a new material by reshaping organic matte into a new form. It’s a new composite thermoplastic material that never existed before.”
After processing, the waste ends up as a powder, a very thin powder similar to talc. The waste is predominantly organic material, so this powder qualifies as biobased. When pressed into pellets, it can be used as a standalone material and as a partial replacement for a percentage of the fossil plastic material in an application. And its price is competitive with current plastic resins.

“We’ve shown that different percentages of UBQ can be substituted for whatever fossil plastic material is being used, without affecting the quality or properties of the polymer or the processing performance. No compatibility issues are seen. It is why we have patented UBQ material as a new composition of matter,” Bigio asserted. 

In the legal sense, UBQ material is extremely well protected: patents have been granted in almost every country in the world, he said. There are currently seven patent families. This includes the use of UBQ together with scrap rubber. The company has grown its product range – next to the basic UBQ material, it now also offers three bio-based material replacements and sustainability additive grades, all based on the company’s globally patented waste-to-materials conversion approach.

The different grades are suitable as sustainability additives (10% to 30% load of UBQ-based material), or as material replacements (greater than 25%-50% and higher load of UBQ-based material).

By incorporating as little as 5% of a UBQ material replacement or additive, businesses can – whether in a single product application or across its supply chain – achieve greater circularity, carbon-neutrality or even carbon-negative/climate-positive status. By designing products with various load levels and capabilities, UBQ enables businesses to achieve ESG goals competitively while transitioning away from fossil-based plastics.

Already, global companies such as Mercedes-Benz, PepsiCo and McDonald's use UBQ materials in their products; they use it in car interior parts, shipping pallets and food trays.

“The material can be coloured and is easily printable. In fact, it shows better printability than a polyolefin, due to its higher surface tension,” said Bigio. He demonstrated a trademark green McDonalds food tray containing 20 per cent UBQ.
“For McDonalds, it’s a no-brainer. Their customers want them to be less wasteful and more concerned about the environment. Replacing part of their raw material with bio-based UBQ means they use less fossil-based raw material and reduce the product's carbon footprint, all at a competitive price. Also, it’s still recyclable – products made with UBQ can be recycled in the plastic’s recycling stream.”

He noted that UBQ Materials could keep the price of their material competitive because the raw material was waste, as opposed to plastics, which are based on oil. “We don't have to buy waste,” he said. And even though the waste supply differs from day to day, the quality remains the same. “Our process is designed to deal with variable material proportions in the waste. It took us over six years – a long, long time - to get it right, but we got there in the end.”

Global ambitions
UBQ, today a B-Corp certified company, operates a plant in Israel and one in the Netherlands, which opened in early 2024. There, the company recycles more than 104,600 tonnes of municipal waste per year, which it converts into 80,000 tonnes of UBQ material. The company partnered with senior European suppliers.

Why the Netherlands? “We wanted to be in Europe, preferably northern Europe, where there’s a lot of industry willing to use alternative materials as long as they represent a sustainable alternative, with consistent quality and at competitive prices. Mercedes Benz is a good example. We also wanted to be somewhere with a well-established waste management infrastructure, like France, Germany or the Netherlands, where you have the market on one side and the feedstock access on the other. Also, most of our machinery is produced in Europe, so being close to our manufacturers made sense. The location in the Netherlands is brilliant – there are ports, good road infrastructure and extraordinary talent. So, we made the decision to build here,” said Bigio.

Once the plant in the Netherlands has shown the world the benefits of UBQ and is operating to capacity the company can start to fulfil its global ambitions. Plans are being made for factories in the United States and other countries, he said. “Waste is not a problem. All countries have waste. Not all countries have oil. And before we can expand, we need to build our  market.”

He continued: “Because, looking into the future, we need to grow if we want to truly have an impact. We want to have factories all over the world that use local waste. In the future, we might move to a licensing model, but that’s not for now. We first need to become a significant market player.

After all, not many clean tech companies in the materials space have created a brand, a household name, and UBQ could become just that. We have a solution for waste and for plastics with a much smaller footprint: the footprint for producing one tonne of UBQ is up to one-twentieth of that of producing a tonne of polypropylene1. It’s incredible. And on top of everything else, we're preventing the emissions of the waste in the landfill and trapping the carbon in the organic material instead of emitting it. It’s a very strong value proposition. How many other materials can say they are circular, carbon negative, recyclable, competitive in price and bio-based, with a USDA certification in the US?

We are creating a new natural resource to feed the growing demand, circulating materials instead of dumping them; and we're replacing a more expensive material called conventional plastics. This also means that people will have to adapt - and change takes time. That’s the process we are going through.”

1 General number from Ecoinvent