On February 20th , Korea’s Ministry of the Environment announced a legislative notice for the amendment of the sub-regulations of the Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources from February 21 for a period of 40 days, aiming to promote the use of recycled plastic raw materials. In this amendment of the sub-regulations, the Ministry of Environment has changed the obligated industries for the use of recycled plastic raw materials from PET raw material producers to the bottled water production industry and other non-alcoholic beverage manufacturing industries that use more than 5000 tons of PET annually. In recent times, the international community has been mandating the use of recycled raw materials to reduce plastic usage. In the United States (California), regulations require the use of recycled raw materials equivalent to 25% for plastic packaging by 2025 and 50% by 2030. In line with this global trend, in 2023, the Ministry of Environment established that producers of raw materials who produce more than 10000 tons of PET synthetic resin annually are obligated to use a minimum of 3% recycled raw materials. However, there is a need for system improvement since, even if these producers manufacture PET raw materials using recycled raw materials, the final product manufacturers (PET bottle producers) do not utilize them.
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