Resource circulating factory

Is plastic evil?

The reason of a negative image that “plastic is evil” is that after it is used, it is eventually discarded and becomes “waste". Instead of “waste", we will realize a process to circulate and utilize it as a resource efficiently.

What Gunze can do

In 2024, the main factory in Moriyama City located in Shiga prefecture, will change into resource circulating factory*¹ that does not emit plastic waste, which is zero emission*² factory.

*1 Resource circulating factory
In the conventional linear system of “Take, Make and Waste”, the products and raw materials were “discarded” without being utilized. Our new factory regards these resources as “new resources” and circulates without producing waste.

*2 Zero emission
By reusing waste from one industry by another, the amount of waste that will eventually be landfilled will be close to zero.

How to circulate

The manufactured film which could not be commercialized has been discarded.
We will change these waste into resources by material recycling.
First, for a single-layer film, we will crush the starting flakes and torn flakes that are inevitably generated during film manufacturing, and change into recycled pellets.
Multi-layer combination film, which is the original technology of Gunze, cannot be easily recycled. We will build a technology to separate film with different compositions, take out only limited materials, and reuse them as raw materials.