Israel-Based UBQ Materials is Turning Garbage into Recyclable Plastic

UBQ Materials, a company founded in 2012 by Rabbi Yehuda Pearl and Tato Bigio, has developed a chemical process that turns garbage into recyclable plastic. And the plastic resin industry in the U.S. is taking note. 

UBQ 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.”

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, pipes, bricks, trays, automobile parts, and more.

“Our material will work with all (conventional plastic) polymers, without changing processes, without changing molds, without changing anything,” notes Bigio.

Cities pay UBQ the same fees they would pay a landfill to take their trash, which allows the company to sell its thermoplastic at the same price as conventional raw plastics yet still make a profit.

Daimler and McDonald’s are currently using UBQ material, “and other companies are experimenting.”

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