Empowering Communities: Apeiron Bioenergy’s Sheri Zuleika
on the Impact of ‘The Oil Cycle’ and Sustainable Innovation

Sheri Zuleika is the ESG executive from Apeiron Bioenergy, a leading integrated global player in biofuels from wasted-based feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO) to end-products.

The ‘Oil Cycle’ proposed by Apeiron Bioenergy aims to promote responsible UCO disposal in Asia and introduce UCO recycling infrastructures in our communities to close the recycling gap and promote a circular economy.

• You have been pioneering “The Oil Cycle”, the community-focused oil recycling arm in Apeiron Bioenergy in addition to the industrial/commercial side. What inspired the start of this, and what is its importance?

The Oil Cycle started 2 years ago. It was parallel because initially our bread-and-butter was collecting from commercial food & beverage (F&B) establishments, but then we realised that with the increasing demand for biofuels, for example, sustainable aviation fuels, the feedstock is basically the bottleneck of the biofuel industry. There’s a limited amount of oil that we can collect at F&B establishments, and we realised that the community can play a huge role as well because households cook as well–there’s this untapped volume of oil from the communities.

Another reason is: being in Singapore, we realised that we can do a lot more when it comes to recycling, including general recyclables like paper, metal, and plastic. But niche recyclables like oil, textile, and food waste, for example, are still developing when it comes to awareness. It’s a really important thing to advocate for because the awareness is very low.

We spoke with grassroot organisations and town councils, and we realised that improper disposal of used cooking oil is actually a very common problem and is often not really talked about. For example, the town councils will spend about $150 a week just to clean the grease traps of hawker centres because not many people know about it. It’s worse in our other subsidiaries in Southeast Asia.

In Singapore, the sewer systems are very robust–when we pour it down the sink, the worst that can happen is the clogging issue. It doesn’t go to our environment because it’s treated, but in other countries that we are present in, like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines where the sewer system is still developing, when you pour [oil] down the sink, it goes directly into our rivers and our oceans, which is extremely pollutive. For every one litre of used cooking oil, it has the potential to contaminate one million litres of freshwater.

[The Oil Cycle] has the dual benefit of educating people when it comes to recycling and disposing of oil properly.

• How has “The Oil Cycle” been involved in the community and what is its importance?

Two years ago, we applied for the SG Eco Fund. We started in primary schools, and we realised that even though students are very young, they are actually very strong allies of sustainability and are very enthusiastic. We see the most effect in primary schools. One of the insights we learned is that behavioural change takes time, and everyone can be involved in something so niche.

After that, we progressed to the second SG Eco Fund, which is working with the elderly. We went into active ageing centres and actually implemented [an oil recycling] bin there. We trained the elderly on how to collect the oil and in return, they get NTUC vouchers.

We’re not only tackling the environmental issue, but the social issue as well. The government mentioned social isolation as one of the problems with the ageing population. By being inclusive in this kind of initiative and giving them a reason to talk to their neighbours about something meaningful, we can also support that as well.

We realised that there’s a greater opportunity in working with our town councils and our grassroots organisations. We started pitching to the different town councils and Vidacity as a community partner as well, which is so important because Vidacity is strategically located at the heartlands.

Being a small company, we’re quite flexible with who we work with. One of the newest partnerships that we have is with this Bible college. [We met her] at one of the events for the town councils. She has a community kitchen because the Bible college houses a lot of people, for example about 40 students, and they cook twice a day. She didn’t know what to do with the oil, and being a community representative, she also understood the problems of used cooking oil disposal. When she saw our solution, she approached us, and we were very happy to work with her.

• What have been some challenges that The Oil Cycle has faced?

Even though we’ve been on this journey for two years, we definitely want to get more traction, because there are about nine to ten town councils in Singapore, and we’re only working with one. [The main challenge is] getting the buy-in of community partners, especially working with a niche initiative.

We are working with the Tanjong Pagar town council so far and are speaking with maybe two more. But I think the pushback is that they need to see a use case and what the impact is. [Another problem] is the risk management: I think one of the biggest barriers of used cooking oil is safety and cleanliness.

For example, they are afraid that if someone puts like a cigarette butt in with the oil, will it be flammable? These are the sort of challenges we have to overcome. We spoke with SCDF which is like the fire department in Singapore, and that really helped a lot.

[At some recycle sites], cigarette butts do go in our bins, unfortunately. Compared to one of the points that has a zero percent contamination rate, it’s because we also did quite a lot of community outreach as well and have an event booth to make sure everyone knows what it is. It’s a very clear difference; we realised that education and infrastructure really goes hand in hand. Without education, this would not be a successful initiative.

The second [risk management issue] is the cleanliness: what if it spills and affects the environment? We need to have these risk mitigation issues in place. [To combat this,] there’s a spill kit at the side of the bin [which contains] an absorbent napkin and rolls to contain the oil. It’s not a foolproof way of cleaning it, but it’s just a way to lessen the oil spill before we come down and clean the area.

We hope that with one town council supporting us, it would be like a spillover effect and eventually more people will see it.

Another challenge is capacity building. For now, our team is very lean. If we want to ramp this up, then we definitely need more people or volunteers.

• What has been a rewarding experience with Apeiron Bioenergy thus far?

I think it’s been super, super fulfilling for me personally. My supervisors have been very trusting in my vision for what I want this to be. I have so much fun working with the different stakeholders. This exposed me to working with children, the elderly, and town councils, for example. I had to frame my pitch to different target audiences. I used to have very bad stage fright, so this has boosted my confidence.

I think it’s very fulfilling when you go to the recycling point and you actually see cooking oil. Especially for kids, even at ages less than 10, you see them actually [recycle oil].

• Apeiron Bioenergy is a decent-sized company and is present in many countries; how does the company scale up, both as a company at large and the Oil Cycle community aspect?

What we do differently from our competitors is that we have a very strong localization strategy. What that means is instead of going there as a foreign company, we don’t want to compete with existing players–we want to collaborate with them. We want to employ local individuals in each country. I think it not only helps when we employ them, but also they already know what’s in their landscape and are the experts in their countries. All of our country managers are all local individuals.

Why we say we do things differently is because we think it’s important for dignified work as well. We provide insurance and uniforms, for example, for our collectors. Another thing is: in the used cooking oil collection space, one thing that people worry about is not being paid in time. With our years of experience and track record, we can gain the trust of the local markets to be able to work with us.

That’s how we scale; it seems very tiny but in accumulation, it eventually scales up. I think word of mouth and reputation is very important.

For now, I think [The Oil Cycle] is more of a pilot test and most importantly, increasing the awareness of recycling used cooking oil. In Singapore, we’re probably the only one who are trying to collect from the community. We are looking to expand the community engagement to other subsidiaries as well, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and also in the Middle East.

In general, the used cooking oil collection market is extremely competitive. If you’ve seen the National Environmental Agency website, we are actually one of the 23 licensed collectors in used cooking oil collection. There are other unlicensed companies that are also collecting the oil–some even come from Malaysia to actually collect the Singapore oil.

The industry is extremely fragmented, even though it’s considered a niche recyclable. In places where we collect from food vendors such as at night markets, you can imagine the tediousness of having to collect from a lot of small different places.

This is also a challenge for community and household collection, which can be even more fragmented if you compare individual households to the small vendors. For Singapore, we are thankfully collecting the oil for free because if it’s already waste, you might as well just recycle it. But in other countries, they actually pay the households for their waste and have a lot of recycling drives to do that. Maybe the scaling-up part for them would be more encouraging because they are getting incentivized. I think hopefully in the future, we can do that in Singapore as well.

• What’s the next focus for you and The Oil Cycle at Apeiron?

I think our priority is very clear, which is to focus on the upstream side. We realised that because of the feedstock bottleneck issue, we see ourselves as a strategic player when it comes to connecting the source to the solution, which is biofuel.

That’s why we are also strongly emphasising the community aspect of this. It may not make commercial sense now, and that’s why a lot of our competitors are not doing this. But we see the potential. We see that once the infrastructure is set up, eventually we are able to tap into the household.

In the pipeline, we want to have UCO machines to digitise our collection process, similar to a vending machine, where you put the plastic in and you get back the incentive. Right now, it’s super laborious for our team because they have to be physically there at the recycling drive. We’re hoping that with [the machines], it eases our capacity for the household and makes it more accessible for the community as well. [It would also provide] a supplementary income for households since when they recycle, they get back some cash.

• Do you have any words of wisdom to people interested in sustainability?

It’s okay to be a generalist. I think if your heart and your intentions are there, you should navigate the space openly. You shouldn’t be afraid of trying different things and talking to lots of people for help. I think people in the sustainability space are very inclusive and very helpful.

To the younger audience, follow your passion and be cautiously optimistic. Follow that drive and just do whatever you can, because even a small thing can make a greater impact.

• If you were reincarnated as a plant, what would you be?

Kangkong: it’s one of Singapore’s favourite veggies because it’s tasteless, but it soaks up all the flavour of different things like sambal and oyster sauce. Kangkong is also a very resilient vegetable. They can survive in a very harsh environment. I want to be reincarnated into a kangkong so that I can grow and adapt in different areas and places, and my end of life would be delicious.