Regenerating Difficult-to-recycle Plastic Waste into Consumer Goods

Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. (Head Office: 2-2-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President: Keiichi Kobayashi; hereafter "Furukawa Electric") has developed a technology to regenerate laminated film, which is difficult to recycle and currently used in many applications such as food and detergent packaging, into high strength reinforced plastic materials. We have received cooperation from Tetra Pak Japan Inc. (Head Office: Iidabashi Grand Bloom 8F, 2-10-2 Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President: Henrik Haugaard; hereafter “Tetra Pak Japan”) and Zebra Co., Ltd. (Head Office: 2-9 Higashi-Gokencho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; President: Shinichi Ishikawa; hereafter “Zebra”) to use this technology to produce ballpoint pens for in-house use. In the future, we will contribute to solving the problem of plastic waste by expanding the range of this technology’s use to include applications such as stationery, furniture, electrical appliances, and automobile parts.

Plastic waste or pollution is considered to be of a great concern, due to its effect on the environmental caused by its outflow into the ocean, and global warming caused by carbon dioxide produced during its incineration. The amount of plastic waste being generated is increasing further at present due to the COVID-19 situation. According to the amended Basel Convention which has come into effect in January 2021, when exporting plastic waste subject to regulation, prior consent from the recipient country has become necessary, and each country will need to make further improvements to their waste management.
Mono-material plastic packaging such as PET bottles can be easily recycled, however in contrast, multi-layered packaging used for items such as potato chips bags, is difficult to recycle. This is because such packaging is often made from layers of different plastic materials as well as aluminum and paper, and therefore for most cases, such waste ends up in landfill or incinerated. In 2019, Furukawa Electric developed a unique technology to regenerate difficult-to-recycle single-use plastic and waste paper as raw materials, allowing them to be regenerated into a higher strength reinforced plastic with just a single process. Cellulose, the main component in paper, usually does not blend well with plastics. However, with this technology, paper is defibrated into cellulose fibers, allowing the fibers to be dispersed into the plastic, resulting in an increase to the tensile strength of the plastic up to approximately double that of its original state. This technology has already been utilised to recycle used paper beverage cartons into our own cable-related products which has been on sale since June 2019.

We have also succeeded in creating prototypes of ballpoint pens^{(note 1)} using other food packaging plastics.

Moving forward, we plan on expanding the range of end applications for this technology, not limiting to our company’s products or ballpoint pens, but for stationery, furniture, electrical appliances, and automobile parts etc. We will continue to coordinate and collaborate with all parties in the recycling value chain, to contribute in solving the problem of plastic waste.