Kashima City of Ibaraki Prefecture, REFINVERSE, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Toyo Seikan Group Holdings, Kewpie Corporation, and KASUMI CO. have entered into a six-party comprehensive partnership agreement with an objective to promote closed-loop recycling of plastic packaging in Ibaraki Prefecture on February 14, 2025. In this pilot project, each of the six partners will pass materials onto the next partner to promote the recycling of plastic through the supply chain.

Dubbed the “Pla-relay Project,” it is the first closed-loop recycling of packaging project in Japan that leverages the unique strengths of a local government, a waste collecting company, a chemical manufacturer, a packaging manufacturer, a food manufacturer and a supermarket.

As the recycling of plastic packaging and containers is essential to achieve a sustainable society, local governments, manufacturers, and retailers are promoting a variety of recycling projects. However, unlike containers that are easy to sort and send to mechanical recycling , such as cans, PET bottles, glass bottles, and cardboard, plastic containers are difficult to sort, collect, and recycle by material type since a single container can be composed of different materials, even though they may appear similar.

To address this issue, the companies that specialize in the manufacturing, sales, collection and recycling of plastics agreed to collaborate and promote the circulation of plastic packaging using chemical recycling in Kashima City.

In this project, the parties will develop a circular model to chemical recycle caps and inner plugs of salad dressing bottles, items that are used in daily life. 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, returning the plastics into the hands of the residents of Kashima City. The finished products, which use the mass balance approach , will be available for sale4 around the summer of 2025.

During periods before and after the pilot, opportunities to research and study plastic resources, tours of participating companies’ plants, and recycling education programs will be offered to public elementary schools and junior high schools in Kashima City.

Furthermore, the six parties plan to jointly create and publish a “validation report on the closed-loop recycling of plastic packaging” by March 2026, based on issues specified and feedback obtained through the project.