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

Trial Run of PET Rebirth in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture: The Search for Urban Chemical Recycling in the Early 2000s
The trial run of PET Rebirth, which began in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, is symbolic of an era in which Japan's recycling policy began to shift from a local-area-intensive approach to an urban recycling approach. However, quality deterioration and application restrictions were inevitable with material recycling, and the handling of colored bottles and multilayered bottles was also a challenge. In response to these limitations, PET Rebirth adopted a technology to chemically decompose PET and recycle it as beverage resin, planning to process 27,500 tons per year. Kawasaki, with its concentration of petrochemical complexes, is unique in its proximity to raw materials, energy, and logistics, enabling a model in which resources generated in the city are recycled in the city. On the other hand, high-cost chemical recycling is subject to uncertainties in institutional evaluation and profitability, and this project is positioned as a transitional experiment to change the conc
ept from quantity treatment to quality and design of circulation routes.