Master Kong, an instant noodles and beverage giant in China, teamed up with Alibaba Group and French utility Veolia to help shrink its carbon footprint.
The pilot project involved recycling Master Kong's waste plastic bottles into new products sold on one of Alibaba Group's grocery platforms. Master Kong is China's largest instant noodles maker and exclusively makes, distributes and sells PepsiCo soft drinks in China.
As world leaders gather in Dubai to discuss the climate crisis at COP28, the pilot showcased how companies with different skill sets could collaborate to recycle waste at scale.
Master Kong, whose holding company is Hong Kong-listed Tingyi (Cayman Islands), collected waste PET bottles and transported them to a processing plant. PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, is a clear and 100% recyclable plastic.
At the plant, water, waste and energy management group Veolia turned the PET bottles into PET pellets, which can easily be made into new products. To complete the circle, the pellets were then used to produce goods for sale on Tmall Supermarket, an Alibaba-owned grocery purchasing platform.
In its latest annual report, Master Kong said had turned the PET pellets into storage boxes and luggage cases with its partners. Twenty thousand recycled PET storage boxes were sold during the project, which ran from August, 2022 to May this year.
The initiative is part of Alibaba and Master Kong's commitment to tackle the plastic pollution crisis. Every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world's oceans, rivers, and lakes, according to the United Nations.
By Alison Tudor Ackroyd and Ivy Yu
