Trial Operation of PET Rebirth in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan: The Search for Urban Chemical Recycling in the Early 2000s

Trial Operation of PET Rebirth in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan: The Search for Urban Chemical Recycling in the Early 2000s
The trial operation of a PET bottle chemical recycling plant by PET Rebirth in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, marked the beginning of a shift in Japan's recycling policy from a local-area-intensive approach to an urban-area recycling approach.

In the early 2000s, the operation of the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law was well established in Japan, and the amount of PET bottles collected was rapidly increasing nationwide. At the same time, however, the increase in the volume of PET bottles collected was creating new challenges, as it was difficult to handle out-of-specification products such as colored and multilayered bottles under a system centered on material recycling. The use of recycled products, which inevitably deteriorate in quality, was limited to fibers and sheets, and their reuse in beverage bottles remained difficult.

Under these circumstances, PET Rebirth, in which Nippon Oil Corporation and other companies have invested, has set up an urban chemical recycling concept in which PET is chemically decomposed and recycled as beverage resin. Although its annual processing capacity of 27,500 tons is smaller than that of large-scale centralized facilities in rural areas, it was clearly significant in that it would allow used bottles generated in urban areas to be recycled in urban areas.

Kawasaki City has a petrochemical complex on the waterfront and a high concentration of raw material supply, energy, and logistics. The model of integrating collection, transportation, and recycling attracted attention from the perspective of reducing transportation costs and environmental impact. In particular, the ability to handle colored bottles and multi-layered bottles was highly evaluated as a technology that is in line with the reality of the collection system.

On the other hand, chemical recycling requires high capital investment and operating costs, and there remained uncertainty regarding its evaluation and profitability under the system. The trial operation in Kawasaki was a transitional experiment to change the concept from quantity treatment to quality and circulation route design, and was an important trial that would lead to later recycling-oriented city policies.