Asahi Breweries, Ltd. and Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture Sign 'Bottle-to-Bottle Recycling Agreement'

Asahi Breweries, Ltd. (Headquarters: Tokyo, President: Kayoko Kondo) and Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture (Mayor: Katsuaki Uechi) signed a “Bottle-to-Bottle Recycling Agreement” on March 27.

Based on this agreement, both parties will collaboratively launch the "Bottle-to-Bottle" recycling business, which will regenerate used PET bottles collected from households in Yokosuka City into new PET bottles for reuse as beverage containers. They will also jointly engage in awareness and environmental education activities targeted at Yokosuka citizens, contributing to the realization of a sustainable circular economy.

"Bottle-to-Bottle" is a PET bottle recycling method that has lower CO2 emissions compared to manufacturing new PET bottles using petroleum-derived materials. In this initiative, to minimize the residue generated during recycling, two methods are combined: "Mechanical Recycling" (physical regeneration method) and "Chemical Recycling" (chemical regeneration method). The goal is to improve the recycling rate beyond that of mechanical recycling alone by chemically recycling the "residual material*" generated during the mechanical recycling process.

* Powder containing a large amount of PET material.

＜Reference＞ ■ Combination of Mechanical Recycling and Chemical Recycling Mechanical recycling is a method where collected PET bottles are melted at high temperatures, impurities are removed, and PET resin is regenerated. Chemical recycling involves chemically breaking down PET bottles to the molecular level, removing impurities, and creating new recycled PET resin. While chemical recycling produces higher quality recycled PET resin, mechanical recycling is considered more advantageous in terms of cost because it does not require large-scale decomposition equipment.

Asahi Breweries aims to improve the recycling rate by combining mechanical and chemical recycling.

Residue and Residual Material in the Recycling Process Mechanical recycling generates about 20% residue during the process, but 5-10% of this residual material is mainly recycled into products other than PET bottles. Since some of the residual material contains PET bottle components, recycling the residual material into PET bottle raw material enables more efficient and sustainable recycling.

---