Starting in November 2024, the global beverage industry giant, Japan's Suntory Group (SUNTORY), launched PET bottles produced using paraxylene (Bio-Paraxylene), which is extracted from waste cooking oil. This will be the world's first commercially available bioparaxylene PET bottle and will help to significantly reduce CO2 emissions compared to PET bottles made from traditional petroleum-based feedstocks. Suntory Group plans to produce approximately 45 million PET beverage bottles and further expand their use. PET resin, the raw material for PET bottles, is made up of 30% ethylene glycol (MEG) and 70% terephthalic acid (TPA). Since 2013, the Suntory Group has been using plant-sourced MEG in its PET bottles for its Natural Water brand.In this new challenge, the Group has succeeded in producing TPA on a commercial scale from waste cooking oil.
Back in September 2023, Suntory Holdings announced a partnership with ENEOS to collect waste cooking oil from Japan. Suntory Group is also considering utilizing this collaboration to produce bio-based PET bottles using bio-naphtha from ENEOS' sustainable aviation fuel plant, which is scheduled to begin operations after 2027. According to the Suntory Group Plastics Policy developed in 2019, the group plans to use only recycled or bio-based materials for all PET bottles globally by 2030 and eliminate the use of petroleum-based materials. To achieve this goal, the Group has been working for some 20 years to reduce the weight of PET bottles, caps and labels through its 2R+B (Reduce/Recycle + Bio) strategy. The Suntory Group is also actively promoting horizontal “bottle-to-bottle” recycling in Japan through agreements with more than 100 municipalities and 40 companies, and is introducing recycled PET bottles in its products. By 2023, more than half of the soft drink bottles sold by Suntory in Japan will use 100% recycled PET bottles. Through a number of initiatives, the Suntory Group will continue its efforts to realize a circular economy and a carbon-neutral society.
