#Recycling / Circular Economy

2020-03-25

Indorama Ventures aims to recycle 50 billion bottles per year by 2025

Mr. Yashovardhan Lohia, Chief Recycling Officer at Indorama Ventures (c) 2020 Indoramaventures

Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), a global company listed in Thailand has recycled 50 billion PET bottles since 2011. The equivalent of over 200,000 elephants in weight. This major global recycling milestone saved three million barrels of crude oil and eliminated 1.65 million tons of carbon. The company has committed US$ 1.5 billion to deliver more recycling infrastructure globally.

Mr. Yashovardhan Lohia, Chief Recycling Officer at Indorama Ventures said, “Today we recycled our 50 billionth PET bottle, since we started in 2011. As a Thai company, we are very proud to achieve this major global recycling milestone. We want to go further because we know PET is fully recyclable and uses less energy and water to produce than alternative beverage packaging. In five years’ time we aim to recycle 50 billion bottles a year.

“To achieve this, we have committed up to US$ 1.5 billion to expand our recycling business. Our work will support household brand names who are using more and more recycled PET in their bottles.”

“No recyclable PET bottle should leak into our environment. We are building the recycling infrastructure the world needs. Our facilities close the loop and deliver a circular economy for PET bottles.” Mr. Lohia said.

Mr. Richard Jones, Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications and Sustainability said, “This is an amazing target to have hit and we are pushing further rapidly.

On 9th March we were pleased to sign a new joint venture with Coca-Cola that will build an advanced recycling plant in the Philippines. This facility will produce food grade recycled PET for new bottles.

“We now are able to supply the major brands with safe and hygienic bottles made from recycled PET in Europe, the Americas and for the first time in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines. The plant is expected to be completed by the end of 2021,” Richard said.

Notes:

Food-grade Recycled Polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) is a plastic or polymer approved by the FDA, Health Canada and the European Food Safety Authority amongst others.

PET is the most used packaging materials for soda and water bottles with 41% of volume share compared to that of aluminium and glass.

Recycled PET bottles are used to create new beverage bottles and many long-lasting products in the clothing and home furnishing sectors.

50 billion recycled PET bottles averted circa 1.1 million tons from landfill

This is the equivalent of 203,700 elephants in weight or, if they were all 500ml bottles laid end-to-end, they would stretch to the moon and back 15 times.

The saving of three million barrels of crude oil is equivalent to 500 roundtrips from Atlanta in USA to Sydney in Australia by car.

As part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, Indorama Ventures committed to increase its PET recycling capacity to 750,000 tons per year and invest up to US$ 1.5 billion to achieve this goal by 2025.

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