PepsiCo, one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, employs PepsiCo Positive (pep+), to put sustainability at the heart of the business, and with the global goal of achieving Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2040, has announced the use of UBQ Material.
Where there are people, there is waste. Literally everything we do creates it. And with so many of us, the amount of waste generated has reached 2 billion tons a year and continues to grow at an alarming rate. What if there was a way to put all this waste to good use? This is exactly the question that sparked the foundation of UBQ Materials – an Israeli startup of the same name which develops sustainable pallets that use unsorted household waste, including organics, in its composition.
During the manufacturing process of UBQ pallets, waste is diverted and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are prevented. In this initial project alone, the material implementation saves the equivalent of more than 6,500 kg of GHG emissions – the equivalent of the annual carbon sequestration of 534 trees. More than 739 kg of mixed waste will be redirected from landfills, looped back into the material as a valuable resource. The pallets are developed by PepsiCo’s partner Ecoboxes Embalagens Plásticas, which specialises in solutions focused on sustainability and circular economy.
Why’s UBQ good?
The UBQ material is a bio-based thermoplastic converted from 100% unsorted municipal solid waste, including mixed plastics, paper, cardboard, and organics, and is suitable to substitute conventional polymers in various durable applications.
Using a patented conversion process, UBQ Materials turns landfill-destined municipal solid waste, including all organics, into UBQ, a climate-positive, cost-competitive, and fully recyclable raw material. A sustainable replacement to virgin petroleum plastic, wood or concrete, UBQ is a circular solution that diverts waste and protects finite natural resources. UBQ is a drop-in material that can be integrated into existing manufacturing processes to reduce the carbon footprint of end-products in a wide variety of industries and applications.
The first phase of the PepsiCo project includes the manufacturing of 830 ecological pallets for use in two of the company’s logistics centres. In addition to UBQ, the pallets are made from recycled materials that include recycled PP resin and recycled BOPP (a plastic film used in the company’s snack packaging), which completes the circular economy cycle.
“This innovation is very exciting for PepsiCo because it helps us on our journey through materials that replace virgin plastic while at the same time working on CO2 reduction. In addition, this is a differentiated material because it represents an alternative to the chain as a whole, especially concerning collection, sorting, transportation and final disposal in landfills. Now we will go further, scale this solution in Brazil, Latin America and why not in other parts of the world,” said Raphael Cyjon, Senior Director of Operations at PepsiCo LatAm.
Also being studied is the possibility of implementing UBQ as a raw material for other applications across the supply chain, demonstrating the commitment of PepsiCo and its partners in the search for solutions that help accelerate its ESG agenda.
Commitment to the planet
PepsiCo has set robust environmental goals that are part of its sustainable transformation agenda, PepsiCo Positive (pep+). These include reducing GHG emissions by 40% in less than a decade and becoming Net-Zero by 2040. In packaging, it also has global objectives that guide it in concrete actions in search of a world where plastic does not become garbage. They include cutting virgin plastic by 50% across the entire food and beverage portfolio and using 50% recycled content in its plastic packaging by 2030; designing 100% of packaging to be recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable; and investing to increase recycling rates in key markets by 2025.
