If you eat at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, your food will come on what looks like a typical plastic tray. But the material is actually made largely from food waste and other trash.<\/p>\n
Arcos Dorados, the largest independent McDonald\u2019s franchise in the world, which operates stores throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, is rolling out thousands of trays made from the material as it works to shrink its use of virgin plastic. The material, called UBQ, is unique in that it\u2019s recycled from a mix of materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cUBQ\u2019s process begins with unsorted household waste destined for landfills\u2014banana peels, chicken bones, and other food leftovers; cardboard and paper; diapers and mixed plastics\u2014everything besides glass and metal, which we remove and send out to recycle,\u201d says Albert Douer, executive chairman of UBQ Materials, the Israel-based company that produces the material.<\/p>\n
By keeping trash out of landfills, where food waste, in particular, emits potent greenhouse gases as it rots, the material has a \u201cclimate positive\u201d footprint, meaning it helps avoid more emissions than it causes. Ideally, of course, the world needs to throw out less trash, and materials have the highest value when they\u2019re recycled individually. But the new technology can help in the imperfect recycling system that exists now.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in places in the world with highly sophisticated recycling infrastructures, over 80% of waste is deemed unrecyclable due to inefficient sorting, food contamination, humidity, and complex multilayered material end-products,\u201d says UBQ cofounder and CEO Jack \u201cTato\u201d Bigio. \u201cUBQ complements existing recycling efforts and takes all of the residual waste that is en route to landfill or incineration, instead upcycling it into a novel raw material for the manufacturing industry. By positioning our technology at the end of the waste life cycle, we are closing the loop of materials reuse and enabling a truly circular economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the McDonald\u2019s franchise, the shift is part of a larger effort to reduce both single-use and virgin plastic. \u201cWe started our plastic reduction program in 2018,\u201d says Gabriel Serber, director of sustainable development and social impact at Arcos Dorados. \u201cIn that year, we eliminated 600 tons of plastics. In 2019, we removed another 700 tons of plastics. The good thing about the program is that those plastics will never return to our restaurants. This is a permanent program, so the impact is exponential.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company has rolled out more than 7,000 of the trays in its Brazilian restaurants, with thousands more in production, and plans to expand the use throughout the country. When the reusable trays eventually wear out, they can be recycled through traditional recycling infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The same material could also be used in other types of products, from flooring to furniture. \u201cImagine entire McDonald\u2019s restaurants made from UBQ,\u201d says Douer, \u201cor better, entire buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAbout the author
\nAdele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world’s largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book “Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you eat at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, your food will come on what looks like a typical plastic tray. But the material is actually made largely from food waste and other trash. Arcos Dorados, the largest independent McDonald\u2019s franchise in the world, which operates stores throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838,5842,5847,7105],"supplier":[3509,17454],"class_list":["post-84461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","tag-biomass","tag-bioplastics","tag-packaging","supplier-mcdonalds-corp","supplier-ubq-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84461"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=84461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}