Foam polystyrene (PS) trays are one of the most ubiquitous food packaging applications in Japan, being primarily used with ready-to-eat meals, and sushi and sashimi sold at supermarkets, convenience stores, and food shops.
Urbanisation and the hectic pace of living for many Japanese have led to a surge in demand for packaged food, in addition to a growing ageing population that is increasingly reliant on prepackaged meals. Reflecting this, the Japanese food packaging foam tray market was valued at $1.2 billion in 2024, and it is projected to reach $1.7bn by 2033.
This creates a lot of waste that needs to be handled, and one Hiroshima-based foam tray manufacturer, FP Corporation (FPCO), has been working to address the problem for the past few decades.
FPCO’s journey started in 1990 when McDonald’s decided to stop using clam shell-type foam containers and switch to paper wrappers, in response to a consumer backlash after its hamburger packaging started showing up on US beaches and elsewhere with increasing regularity.
After reading about what was happening in the US, FPCO founder and president at the time, Yasuhiro Komtsue, had a sense of impending trepidation about Japan’s own growing waste volumes. He feared it would only be a matter of time before Japanese food tray manufacturers faced a similar backlash and decided the only solution was for his company to start recycling its own foam trays.
Bin attraction
FPCO started by working with six supermarket outlets in Hiroshima and Osaka prefectures to set up recycling bins for consumers to dispose of the used trays. Very soon, both FPCO and the retail companies realised that the outlets with recycling bins attracted more consumers than those that didn’t. This trend encouraged more retailers to join the scheme.
Within two years, FPCO started to develop foam trays made from the collected recycled material, branding them ‘Eco Trays’. A new set of recycling laws, which came into force in Japan in the late 1990s, further helped grow consumer recycling habits.
One of Japan’s largest retail chains decided to switch to Eco Trays across all of its stores, pushing up demand for foam trays made from recycled material. FPCO eventually branched out to collect and recycle clear plastics packaging and PET bottles, using that recycled material to produce Eco Trays as well.
The system is straightforward. Supermarkets set up the recycling bins and replace the plastics bags inside when they fill up with disposed trays. Wholesalers collect the full bags when they deliver goods to supermarkets. FPCO then collects the used trays from wholesalers.
As of September 2024, FPCO had recycling bins at approximately 11,000 outlets across the country. Eco Trays produced from recycled materials accounted for approximately 48 per cent of FPCO’s total product sales, with figures of such products exceeding $500 million per annum. By manufacturing and selling Eco Trays instead of just trays made from virgin materials, FPCO estimates that between 30 to 37 per cent carbon dioxide emissions were saved in the 12 months to July 2024. Such figures are only set to improve as time goes on, the company maintains.
In November 2024, Japanese chemicals giant DIC Corporation completed the construction of a new facility for the dissolution and separation recycling of PS used in coloured and patterned foamed food trays at its Yokkaichi Plant in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. Partnering with FPCO, both parties aim to achieve the first closed loop recycling system for foam trays in Japan via mechanical recycling.
The traditional approach
While used white foamed trays can be recycled into new food trays, coloured and patterned foamed trays have traditionally been recycled into materials for household items such as clothes hangers, due to the resultant colour of pellets produced when they are pulverised.
In an attempt to overcome this, DIC’s dissolution and separation technology specifically targets coloured and patterned foam trays that are popular with Japanese consumers. This deinking chemical process removes the coloured elements from black pellets, transforming them into transparent pellets and enabling the closed-loop ‘tray-to-tray’ recycling of these trays into new food trays.
DIC’s new dissolution and separation recycling facility will supply approximately 10,000 tonnes of PS annually that has been recycled from coloured and patterned foamed food trays collected by FPCO. It is estimated that this increased the production volume of FPCO’s Eco Trays by 30 per cent by the end of 2025.
In addition to increasing the volume of PS recycled at this facility using material recycling, DIC and FPCO are also developing chemical recycling technologies to reduce PS to styrene monomer, with the aim of creating a hybrid comprehensive closed-loop recycling system sometime this year.
By Trina Tan
