Plastic bottles can be recycled as textile raw materials for clothing, but plastic bottles from South Korea were hard to use as recycled materials due to the mixture of foreign substances. (Yonhap)
SEJONG, Feb. 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Starting this month, households must separate colorless plastic bottle from other recyclable items.
The Ministry of Environment said Wednesday it will implement a related pilot project from February in collaboration with six local governments, including Seoul and Busan.
Plastic bottles can be recycled as textile raw materials for clothing, but plastic bottles from South Korea were hard to use as recycled materials due to the mixture of foreign substances.
The regenerated fiber industry has imported 2.2 million tons of waste plastic bottles annually from Japan and Taiwan and used them as raw materials.
Separate collection boxes for colorless plastic bottles will be installed at apartment buildings and waste collecting facilities.
Detached houses will receive colorless transparent bags, allowing them to separate colorless waste bottles from other recyclables.
Authorities will gradually expand the separate collection of colorless waste plastic bottles after analyzing the performance of the pilot project in the future.
Meanwhile, public-private partnership projects will also be strengthened, including the use of the private industry’s distribution network to recover clean waste bottles.
The government will sign a business agreement with a number of private companies this month that calls for “reversal recovery” of clean waste bottles with its own distribution network.
Reverse recovery refers to the way vendors take goods back after shipping new products if consumers ask for “return of plastic bottles” in advance and place the waste bottles in an appropriate area.
The government expects to recycle the reverse recovery waste plastic bottles, which are expected to range from 10 to 30 tons per month, into long-term textiles for clothing.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
