[Courtesy of Innerbottle]
SEOUL -- LG Chem, the chemical unit of South Korea's LG Group, joined hands with a domestic reusable plastic bottle maker and a major logistics company to create an efficient, fully sustainable recycling system for plastic cosmetic containers.
Creating a fully sustainable plastic recycling system is the most ideal answer to solve waste problems. However, it is not so easy to create such an ecosystem in the actual world. Because recycling is an expensive and time-taking job, it is hard to make a profit unless the production, distribution, collection, recycling, and redistribution of plastic products are carried out by a circle of manufacturers, logistics companies and recycling companies.
LG Chem said in a statement that the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Innerbottle, a reusable bottle maker, and CJ Logistics to create an efficient recycling ecosystem platform that would minimize costs including the handling, storage, transportation and cleaning of collected materials.
Innerbottle founded in 2018 is the key player in LG Chem's plastic recycling platform. The company can produce plastic bottles with an elastic silicone inner layer. When contents such as cosmetics or sauce are all used up, the bottle can be easily cleaned and recycled by just removing the inner layer and cleaning the bottle before inserting a new inner layer.
LG Chem will produce source materials for the production of plastic bottles using raw and recycled materials. Innerbottle will produce reusable bottles. CJ Logistics will use delivery workers and infrastructure to collect used bottles. The collection process will be carried out as an on-demand service through a website. When a customer order a new cosmetics product filled inside a reusable bottle, a deliveryman will collect used bottles.
LG Chem will carry out joint research with Innerbottle to develop acrylonitrile butadiene latex (NB latex) as an alternative material for the silicon inner layer pouch. NB latex is mainly used for medical and laboratory gloves for its tough and elastic characteristics.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
