Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture Teijin Fibers Tokuyama Factory Chemical Recycling Challenge for High-Quality Circulation Late 1990s to Early 2000s

Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture Teijin Fibers Tokuyama Factory Chemical Recycling Challenge for High-Quality Circulation Late 1990s to Early 2000s
The bottle-to-bottle business that began at Teijin Fibers Limited's Tokuyama Factory in Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, was a symbol of the shift in Japan's recycling policy from a focus on quantitative processing to qualitative recycling. However, it was difficult to recycle PET bottles back into beverage bottles due to inevitable quality deterioration and application restrictions in the then-mainstream material recycling process. To overcome these limitations, the Tokuyama Plant adopted chemical recycling, in which PET is broken down to monomers and repolymerized. While this method imposes a heavy process and cost burden, it is characterized by its ability to remove impurities and ensure quality equivalent to that of new raw materials. The project has realized a processing capacity of 62,000 tons per year, backed by the location of Shunan City, where petrochemical complexes are concentrated, and the support of Yamaguchi Prefecture's Eco-Town concept. This project was an
attempt to establish the product life cycle as a closed loop, rather than just waste treatment, and became a reference point for subsequent recycling-oriented society policies and high-quality recycling technologies.