NIPPON EXPRESS Holdings announced on November 13 that it has commenced a demonstration project for the chemical recycling of waste plastics discharged from construction sites, which was selected as part of the Ministry of the Environment's publicly solicited project, "Support Project for the Formation of Advanced Social Implementation Models for Plastic Resource Recycling in FY2025," and will be carried out by six companies including its subsidiary Nippon Express.
The demonstration project will be conducted by six companies: Kajima Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, Nippon Express, Refineverse Group, Aozora, and Mitsubishi Chemical, with Nippon Express handling collection and transportation.
<Flowchart of the demonstration project>
Construction waste plastics (construction-related plastic waste) generated from construction sites are diverse, including packaging materials used during material transport, protective materials for floors and walls, and scraps from on-site work. In addition, they are often contaminated with dirt, making sorting and impurity removal time-consuming. As a result, most of them are disposed of through thermal recovery, incineration, or landfill.
The six companies are focusing on chemical recycling, which involves breaking down waste plastics and converting them back into oil for reuse. In the demonstration project, they will evaluate the challenges of chemical recycling of construction waste plastics from both environmental and economic perspectives, aiming to improve the recycling rate of plastics and build a supply chain for horizontal expansion across the entire construction industry, and then devise solutions.
Furthermore, given that construction sites are scattered across various locations, a life cycle assessment analysis will be conducted to consider CO2 emissions associated with collection and transportation, and the CO2 emission reduction effect will be calculated, thereby providing a comprehensive evaluation from a decarbonization perspective.
