Monetizing the Reprocessing of Waste Management

Q: As founder and CEO of Lealtad Verde, what drove your dedication to waste management efforts?

A: Lealtad Verde was built on 17 years of progressive evolution guided by technology limitations, innovation, market intelligence and environmental awareness. Prior to its present commercial strategy, Lealtad Verde concerned itself with the production of plastics. The success of this venture carried the company through its early start into 2009.

In parallel, motivated by our early success, we developed our first polymeric plastic formulation process to expand into the market niche of plastic alternatives. When they debuted, oriented plastics were the first degradable alternative to traditional polyethylene plastics. Unfortunately, as is common with new technological innovations, the cost of production was still too high to achieve market accessibility. Moreover, at the time, there were no federal compliance standards regarding single-use plastics, meaning that market demand for alternative plastics relied on internal initiatives. Understanding this market behavior gave us the idea to pivot toward the reprocessing of plastic residuals, reusing the waste that is the root of ecological problems. The problem was that post-consumer material often required washing before being reused, which is an expensive process in the absence of an effective waste management system. We developed technology solutions to solve this problem by emphasizing a circular uptake from post-consumption, which has made Lealtad Verde a world leader in this field.

Q: How does the Green Loyalty 360 application invite consumers to participate in this circular waste management model?

A: Lealtad Verde is using technology to generate awareness of the Green Loyalty 360 program and educate consumers on how to mitigate their personal carbon footprint. Technology plays an important role in the daily life of consumers so we have centered our awareness initiatives around this principle. All the waste generated on a daily basis from purchased items has a common denominator: the packaging. Plastic assets lack a clear classification standard, which directly impacts their value.

The Green Loyalty 360 application addresses this problem directly by serving as a management tool that automatically identifies, classifies and separates waste. It scans the product’s barcode to acquire information about the package’s functionality and value, and tells users where they can exchange the waste for a monetary reward. As an added incentive, we allied with other companies to provide rewards, benefits and gifts in exchange for the user’s participation.

Q: What partnerships does Lealtad Verde have with similar organizations?

A: Lealtad Verde has created strategic partnerships with green allies, which will play two different roles as this project breaks ground in Mexico. First, Lealtad Verde hopes to capture greater market participation and our allies will benefit from demonstrating to consumers that they are taking actionable steps toward their ESG goals. Second, we rely on the strategic geographic positioning of our allies as a matter of convenience for consumers. Our allies will double as exchange points where customers can exchange recyclables for a monetary reward. As an added bonus, our allies will see potential transactions from the larger number of visitors. By 2025, we would like to build a network with over 6,000 return-points nationwide.

Q: What objectives does the company look to accomplish in 2022 and how will it be measuring its success?

A: Lealtad Verde’s Green Loyalty 360 program was built on over five years of R&D and will launch in Mexico City and Monterey this year, in alliance with our green allies. We want to establish over 6,000 return-points nationwide by 2025 and remove 650 million plastic containers from the country’s landfills. If successful we will have helped reduce CO2 emissions by 12 million tons.

We also hope to have a successful launch in Uruguay and Spain, where we will be launching simultaneously.