Film to Film closed-loop recycling pouch container
Company:
Kao Corporation, Lion Corporation
Country: Japan
Category: Household
Multi-Material-layer pouch container like refill packs made with 70% less plastic compared to bottles, making them effective in waste reduction. However, almost all pouch packs are disposed of without being recycled after use. Since pouches contain different materials in their structures, it has been very difficult to recycle them. Therefore, to promote a circular economy for plastic packaging, a pouch-to-pouch recycling technology was developed, which collects used pouches and regenerates them into new ones.
Through this development activity, Fine dispersion technology for dissimilar resins in polyethylene film and high-purity resin technology were developed, resulting in “the world's first pouch-to-pouch recycling”. This achievement made it possible for the first time to recycle multi-layer pouches, which were previously considered difficult to recycle.
The recycled pouch containers contain used pouches collected from consumers as recycled resin. When the establishment of the social system for collecting used pouches, there was a collaborative effort across companies, including the partnership between Kao corporation and Lion corporation, leading household product manufacturers in Japan. Therefore, the development of these recycled pouch containers not only produced technological value, but also created social value through inter-company collaboration.