Israel-based UBQ has been named the recipient of a 2021 SEAL Business Sustainability Award in the Sustainable Product category. SEAL - Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership - is an environmental advocacy organisation.
UBQ received the honour for its patented UBQ material, a bio-based thermoplastic made entirely of unsorted household waste, including all the organics, which it developed and has now commercialised.
The 2021 winners, announced yesterday, ranged from global brands (like Disneyland, General Motors, Salesforce, Samsung, and Skullcandy) to high-growth start-ups and scale-ups.
Each year, the SEAL Awards recognise some 50 sustainable companies, as well as the most impactful and innovative environmental initiatives in four sustainability award categories.
The SEAL Sustainable Product Award honours ‘innovative and impactful products that are literally “purpose-built” for a sustainable future’.
The UBQ process makes use of residual solid municipal waste, landfill-destined waste previously considered unrecyclable. Household waste mainly consists of organic materials. UBQ’s waste conversion technology breaks these back down into their constituent parts - lignin, cellulose, fibers, and sugars—and then reassembles them into a matrix. The remaining mixed plastics are melted and bound into the matrix to create UBQ, a composite thermoplastic material.
In other words, the process creates value from formerly valueless waste. For every ton of UBQ produced, as much as 12 tons of CO2 equivalent are protected from entering the atmosphere.
“UBQ is establishing a new standard in responsible manufacturing, introducing the market to a material that is both environmentally and economically sustainable. A solution can only power the transition to a truly circular economy if it is also cost-competitive,” said Jack “Tato” Bigio, Co-founder and Co-CEO of UBQ Materials.
A certified B Corp, UBQ is a globally awarded cleantech company with customers including Mercedes-Benz, Mainetti, and Arcos Dorados, the world’s largest franchise of McDonald’s restaurants across Latin America, who use UBQ as a substitute for virgin petroleum plastics, wood, and concrete to reduce the carbon footprint of their products.