Israeli Recycling Technology To Revolutionize Global Waste

By 2050, global production of municipal solid waste is expected to increase from a huge 2.01 billion tons per year to a colossal 3.4 billion tons per year.

As the world throws more away, global plastic production and consumption is also rising sharply, expected to soar from 350 million tons to 1.35 billion tons annually by 2050.

Despite increasing efforts to recycle unwanted household goods, the destination for the vast majority of solid waste is some form of landfill, causing methane and other damaging greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.

While increased waste production and plastic demands both provide significant causes for concern, one Israeli company’s innovative technology promises a solution to both worrying trends simultaneously.

UBQ, based in Kibbutz Tze’elim, emerged last year from stealth mode to unveil its solution of converting unsorted household waste into a sustainable, bio-based, climate-positive thermoplastic material that can be used for commercial and industrial products instead of petroleum-based plastics.

Dubbed as “the most climate-positive material on the planet” by sustainability strategists Quantis International, the company is garnering significant international attention.

“We have created a new natural resource from the household waste that ends up in landfills, avoiding its decomposition into harmful gases, while replacing scarce and expensive plastic materials made from oil,” UBQ co-founder and chief executive Jack (Tato) Bigio told The Jerusalem Post. “That’s a blessing to the industry. Many companies in the last 10 to 20 years have emerged with solutions that turn out to be flops in one way or another. Never again,” he said.

Unlike the climate-negative plastics that dominate the market, such as polyethylene, PVC and polypropylene, producing 1 kg. of UBQ material saves 11.7 kg. of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and a total replacement offset value of 14.5 kg.

In other terms, producing one ton of UBQ is equivalent to stopping the melting of 35 sq-m. of arctic ice, or the sequestration of 540 trees over 10 years old.

One industrial-level operational UBQ facility, with a capacity of producing 80,000 tons per year, is equivalent to taking over 565,000 cars off the road for a single year.

Produced from unsorted household waste, the worldwide-patented bio-based product is a homogeneous composite material that can be mixed with plastic resins in the end-product plastic industry.