Master Kong, a major player in the instant noodles and beverage industry in China, has collaborated with Alibaba Group and French utility Veolia to reduce its carbon footprint. This joint effort involved recycling Master Kong's discarded plastic bottles by transforming them into new products available on one of Alibaba Group's grocery platforms. Notably, Master Kong holds the distinction of being China's largest instant noodles manufacturer and the exclusive producer, distributor, and seller of PepsiCo soft drinks in the country.
During the COP28 conference in Dubai, where global leaders convened to address the climate crisis, the collaborative pilot project demonstrated the potential for companies with diverse expertise to effectively scale up waste recycling initiatives. Master Kong, under the umbrella of its holding company Tingyi (Cayman Islands), gathered waste PET bottles and transported them to a processing facility. PET, known as polyethylene terephthalate, is a transparent and entirely recyclable plastic.
At the processing plant, Veolia, specializing in water, waste, and energy management, converted the PET bottles into PET pellets—a versatile material suitable for creating new products. These pellets were then utilized to manufacture goods available for purchase on Tmall Supermarket, Alibaba's grocery platform. In its recent annual report, Master Kong highlighted the transformation of PET pellets into storage boxes and luggage cases, with 20,000 recycled PET storage boxes sold during the project's duration from August 2022 to May of the following year.
This collaborative initiative reflects Alibaba and Master Kong's shared commitment to addressing the plastic pollution crisis, a problem highlighted by the United Nations, which notes that the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks filled with plastic are deposited into the world's oceans, rivers, and lakes daily.
Moreover, both Alibaba and Master Kong are founding members of the Global Development Initiative for Sustainable Development Goals, introduced by the UN Global Compact in China in 2022. As consumers increasingly demand transparency and sustainability in supply chains, Alibaba conducted a survey revealing that 73% of consumers welcome more information about environmentally conscious online purchases. To document and monitor its recycling efforts, Master Kong enlisted Alibaba Cloud's carbon management platform, Energy Expert, which tracked and recorded the carbon emission savings resulting from the recycling of Master Kong's PET plastic bottles in 2022.
Energy Expert discovered that seven discarded plastic bottles could be transformed into a single PET storage box, with each recycled PET storage box carrying a cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of 1.002 kg/unit.
Thanks to the recycling process, the carbon footprint of each PET storage box was 21% smaller compared to if it were manufactured from virgin PET material, a measurement conducted by Energy Expert.
To enhance transparency and secure data processing, Energy Expert employed blockchain technology. This involved recording crucial information, such as real-time production images, shipping order numbers, and production batch numbers, on the blockchain. This ensured the secure and tamper-proof storage of data.
Each recycled PET storage box contains a QR code that consumers can scan to access carbon emission data throughout the entire production chain. This includes details about the recycling and transportation of PET bottles, as well as the transportation of the finished products to the warehouse.
The 20,000 recycled PET storage boxes sold during the project were individually labeled, providing consumers with information about their specific carbon footprints.
This pilot initiative is just one of several sustainability projects undertaken by Master Kong. Additionally, the group introduced the first standard for carbon footprint accounting and a standard for carbon neutralization evaluation for tea beverages in China.