Kashima City of Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan, REFINVERSE, Mitsubishi Chemical, Toyo Seikan Group, Kewpie, and KASUMI have entered into a six-party comprehensive partnership agreement to promote closed-loop recycling of plastic packaging in Ibaraki Prefecture.

This pilot project is the first closed-loop recycling of packaging project in Japan that leverages unique strengths of local government, waste collecting company, chemical manufacturer, packaging manufacturer, food manufacturer and supermarket. Each partners will pass materials onto the next partner to promote the recycling of plastic through the supply chain.

Representatives of the six partners in the recycling pilot project.

Outline of the project

In this project, the partners will develop a circular model to recycle caps and inner plugs of salad dressing bottles with chemical recycling.

Outline of the recycling project.

Caps and inner plugs of salad dressing bottles will be collected experimentally at public elementary schools in Kashima City and REFINVERSE will collect and perform the pretreatment of the used caps.

Mitsubishi Chemical will then convert the pretreated caps into raw material for chemicals at its new chemical recycling plant, which will in turn be transformed into plastic resins at Japan Polypropylene and Japan Polyethylene.

Mebius Packaging, a subsidiary of Toyo Seikan Group, will mold the plastic resin into caps and plugs for bottles, which Kewpie will use in their salad dressing bottles.

Finally, KASUMI will sell the finished products at its Kashima Stadium Store, closing the loop of plastic packaging. The finished products, which use the mass balance approach, will be available for sale around the summer of 2025.