For a couple of decade now, Israel’s Environmental Safety Ministry has been working to enhance the nation’s recycling charges, partially by attempting to teach and persuade the general public to separate their trash and put it within the appropriate recycling bin.
These efforts have produced marginal outcomes, however roughly 80 p.c of the nation’s municipal waste nonetheless results in landfills. Final 12 months, these landfills almost reached their permitted capacities, prompting the ministry to write down up an emergency growth plan. To deal with Israel’s mounting rubbish drawback, the ministry has developed a method for lowering the entire quantity of waste despatched to the dump to twenty p.c by 2030. However the nation faces the identical uphill battle it all the time has, as a result of the plan nonetheless will depend on common folks correctly sorting their trash. And that simply doesn’t occur sufficient.
Enter UBQ Supplies, a Tel Aviv-based startup that converts family rubbish into an alternate plastic materials — with no sorting required.
UBQ diverts waste headed for Israel’s landfills to its plant in Kibbutz Tze’elim, about two hours south of Tel Aviv. There metals and glass are separated and despatched to conventional recyclers, whereas UBQ turns the remainder of the refuse — meals scraps, blended plastics, cardboard, paper, all of it — into little thermoplastic pellets which are bought to prospects in quite a lot of industries, at a value comparable to traditional fossil-fuel-based plastics. The fabric, which the corporate additionally calls UBQ, quick for ubiquitous, is used to make every little thing from garments hangers to quick meals trays to automotive interiors.
Jack “Tato” Bigio co-founded the corporate in 2012, together with Yehuda Pearl, founding father of hummus maker Sabra, and Rany Lev, a company lawyer who additionally occurs to be a pilot for El Al Israel Airways.
Our materials is utilized in the identical manner as standard plastics to create end-products, by mainly all of the industries conceivable.
Bigio grew up in Lima, on the Pacific Coast of his native Peru, and spent a lot of his free time as a child swimming and enjoying within the ocean. After attending Colegio León Pinelo, Peru’s solely Jewish college, he set off for school in Israel, incomes an MBA from The Hebrew College of Jerusalem. He fell in love with the nation and has lived there ever since, elevating a household and constructing a profession in enterprise that took him to the highest of Ampal-American Israel Corp., an funding holding firm the place he served as president and CEO for 4 years. Then, in 2006, his ardour for the pure world drove him to influence entrepreneurship. He co-founded Merhav Renewable Energies, which he ran for 3 years earlier than turning his consideration to waste.
Greater than a decade later, UBQ Supplies is getting into a brand new section: worldwide growth. The corporate accomplished its newest funding spherical in December, elevating $170 million, the majority of it from TPG Rise, the worldwide influence investing division of personal fairness agency TPG. I spoke with Bigio, who serves as UBQ’s co-CEO, in regards to the firm’s processes, environmental influence, company companions and the place it is headed subsequent. The next excerpt has been edited for size and readability. To listen to extra of the interview, together with extra particulars about UBQ’s growth plans and Bigio’s outlook on the way forward for the round economic system, tune into the subsequent episode of the GreenBiz 350 podcast.
CJ Clouse: Are you able to clarify the method the corporate makes use of to transform waste into plastic? You begin by finding out the metals and glass, appropriate?
Tato Bigio: Sure, these supplies are helpful, particularly the metals, and extremely recyclable. They usually don’t actually give any benefit to our plastic materials as a result of they’re too abrasive. So we take out as a lot as attainable and ship these to the recyclers, and that mainly leaves us all the opposite stuff, the stuff that no person desires, that may have ended up in landfill decomposing and emitting methane, and that’s what we convert into UBQ.
Clouse: And the way precisely does that occur?
Bigio: First, simply to clarify, UBQ doesn’t do recycling. The distinction between conversion and recycling is that while you recycle, you flip plastic into plastic, cardboard into cardboard and paper into paper. However we’re taking all these supplies, blended along with the meals residues and the backyard trimmings, even the soiled diapers, and turning all of it into one homogeneous, constant materials. It is because, usually, natural materials — like a potato, a cucumber, a banana peel or rooster or fish — on the particle stage consists of very related constructing blocks. As soon as we break the natural materials into particles, we’ve a standard denominator that we use to bond the particles and construct the matrix that has thermoplastic traits.
So, we’re utilizing a really superior chemical course of, however fortunately the method is finished at low temperatures, so we do not burn any of those supplies. Now we have a really clear and environment friendly course of that makes use of low ranges of vitality. When you think about that we use warmth of 200 levels Centigrade, which is about 380 Fahrenheit, that’s far lower than the plastic trade makes use of to make polymers like polypropylene. For that, they use 800 to 1,200 Centigrade warmth. We’re utilizing one-sixth or one-fifth of that.
Clouse: And you utilize little or no water as nicely, no? Since we’re speaking about saving pure assets.
Bigio: Effectively, we do not use any water within the course of. It’s fairly exceptional as a result of the method of constructing supplies, cardboard or paper, and even in plastic recycling, makes use of great quantities of water. And our course of doesn’t want any.
Clouse: That’s wonderful. And what in regards to the materials you produce, who’s shopping for it? And may you give me just a few examples of the varieties of merchandise being made utilizing UBQ?
Bigio: What we’re promoting is these little pellets of UBQ materials just like the way in which that polypropylene, polyethylene and polystyrene plastics are bought in pellets to producers. Our materials is utilized in the identical manner as standard plastics to create end-products, by mainly all of the industries conceivable. We’re within the automotive trade, and simply to offer examples right here, one of many greatest automakers, Mercedes-Benz, is utilizing UBQ materials in various plastic elements in its vehicles, and its future vehicles will embrace increasingly UBQ materials.
Then within the retail trade, we’ve an organization referred to as Mainetti that’s the greatest maker of plastic hangers on the planet. Within the development enterprise, UBQ materials is getting used to make pipes, roofing, siding, ground panels; in logistics, they use it to make transportation pallets, bins, beams, et cetera, then there’s additionally furnishings. The one trade the place we’re not but promoting is the meals trade for contact purposes, as a result of we’ve not gone via an FDA approval course of. It is a prolonged course of that we’ll be doing later. However we will use UBQ with near-food contact purposes. For instance, the most important licensee of McDonald’s on the planet, Arcos Dorados in Latin America, they’re making plastic trays utilizing UBQ materials and even branding the trays with UBQ within the nook. We’re extraordinarily joyful about that.
Clouse: And what number of those end-products is made with UBQ? If I had been to purchase a hanger or a Mercedes-Benz, how a lot of the dashboard in my Mercedes could be UBQ?
Bigio: The extra, the higher. You’ll find merchandise made with 20 p.c UBQ; you will discover merchandise made with 60 p.c, which is almost all, by the way in which — the bulk use greater than 50 p.c. And the extra the trade adapts and adopts new supplies, the extra the trade additionally adapts its processes and its gear. New supplies like UBQ are sometimes examined in low quantities, then because the trade begins to shift, they’re elevated increasingly. It’ll all the time take time for producers to adapt, however the extra they get acquainted and used to the fabric, the extra they purchase.
Clouse: So, if I’m understanding accurately, theoretically, you may make one thing one hundred pc out of UBQ. It is simply trade requirements and practices, processes, equipment and all of that want time to catch up.
Bigio: Sure, precisely.
Clouse: You have attracted fairly a little bit of consideration from buyers, together with a latest $170 million funding spherical led by TPG Rise. From what I perceive, you’re going to make use of that cash to assist finance an growth. Inform me a bit of bit about these plans and the place you are going subsequent.
Bigio: Sure, these funds can be used to develop the actions of UBQ internationally, each by way of factories and by way of personnel; we are going to after all want extra staff for the factories and for all of the supporting industrial actions. And the thought is to maneuver as quick as attainable. The primary facility is being constructed within the south of the Netherlands. We count on to start out operations in that plant in late 2022. And in parallel, we’re transferring ahead with the event of recent websites in different places in Europe and in the US.
It’ll all the time take time for producers to adapt, however the extra they get acquainted and used to the fabric, the extra they purchase.
Clouse: Securing funding is all the time one of many greatest challenges that entrepreneurs face after they begin a enterprise. What has that have been like for you?
Bigio: Within the final 12 months or two, there’s been a large shift in consciousness in regards to the significance of creating various supplies, renewable energies and different clear applied sciences. And the monetary world is shifting, as nicely, in the correct route. Now you see enterprise capital funds and fairness funds that had been sometimes very concerned within the digital economic system, synthetic intelligence, software program platforms and all of that, understanding that there’s a huge alternative within the clear vitality sector and within the various supplies sector. You’re seeing a number of funding coming in.
Additionally, governments and NGOs are pushing the agenda and creating an surroundings the place these various merchandise can be higher acquired. All of that is creating a really enticing alternative for entrepreneurs to come back into this enviornment and develop new supplies, new processes and new applied sciences. The surroundings has actually modified for the higher. Ten years in the past, once we established UBQ, it was really totally different. There was some urge for food for it, however it was tough. At this time, for my part, there’s ample room for entrepreneurs to enter this enviornment.
