SK chemicals has announced the formation of the Waste Banner Resource Circulation Consortium with MOA, Daehan Media, Upcloth, and the Resource Circulation Team of Seogwipo City, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. The consortium was established as a result of waste banner processing challenges and the circular economy development that SK chemicals put forward at the Solveathon idea competition.
The four participating organisations will each take charge of collecting waste banners in their respective regions. Each company also benefits from their individual expertise in areas like pre-processing, distribution, and sales to build, as well as SK chemicals' knowledge of the entire process spanning recycling, product manufacturing, and distribution.
By region, the following companies will be in charge of collecting waste:
- MOA and Daehan in the Gyeongsang region.
- Upcloth in the Honam region. They will also pursue local job creation by employing participants in self-sufficiency programs and people with disabilities.
- Seogwipo City in Jeju. They will also work on establishing the necessary institutional framework so that the entire cycle can be completed within the region.
Waste banners by the four organisations will be sent to MOA to be processed into a form and quality suitable for chemical recycling. It will then be converted into feedstock using SK chemicals' depolymerisation technology and transformed into materials that can be used to make banners again.
An estimated 1,000+ tons of waste banners are generated each year in the Gyeongsang, Honam, and Jeju regions participating in the project. Once resource circulation systems for waste banners are established in each region through this project, it is expected that the volume of waste banners sent to landfills and incinerators will be significantly reduced.
The initiative aims to tackle the waste banner problem by building a sustainable structure, where waste banners are turned back into banners through depolymerisation technology. SK chemicals' solution breaks waste plastics down to the molecular level, returns them to feedstock, and then repolymerises them. Depolymerisation converts waste into feedstock through a chemical process, structurally eliminating the effects of prior use, colour, and impurities.
A representative of SK chemicals said, “Waste banners are a waste issue that most local communities are grappling with, but each region's circumstances and approaches differ to some extent. Through collaboration with the participating organisations, we will broaden the scope to the metropolitan and provincial level to build waste banner circulation systems and create real success stories of turning waste banners back into banners.”
