On October 7, 2026, NEC Corporation announced that it has joined the “Research on Strengthening Resource Circulation Systems for Collaboration Across the Value Chain and Recycling Industry,” a project conducted by the Hiroshima Resource Circulation Association (a general incorporated association), and has launched a demonstration project for manufacturing recycled plastics derived from industrial waste. In the process of converting waste plastics generated through actual business activities into recycled plastics, NEC will build a data collaboration infrastructure utilizing its plastics information platform “PLA-NETJ,” supporting quality verification and traceability assurance for the recycled plastics.
The demonstration will run from August 2026 to March 2027, led by the Hiroshima Resource Circulation Association in collaboration with industrial waste treatment operators, repelletizing operators, universities, and testing and analysis institutions within the prefecture. The project will focus on polypropylene and polyethylene, which are widely used across industry, covering the sorting and reprocessing of waste plastics generated mainly by the manufacturing sector, as well as physical property evaluation of the resulting recycled plastics.
PLA-NETJ is a platform being developed by NEC under the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP, a Japanese government program that funds cross-sector research and development), and it manages information such as the source of waste plastics, plastic types and product numbers, processing and recycling steps such as crushing, sorting, and repelletizing, and test specimens and physical property evaluation results for the recycled plastics. The demonstration will verify the feasibility of ensuring traceability from waste discharge through to the manufacturing and evaluation of recycled plastics, and whether the information needed for quality verification can be shared among the relevant operators.
As momentum to require the use of recycled materials accelerates, particularly in Europe, ensuring traceability to track the origin and processing history of recycled materials is also becoming increasingly important for Japan’s manufacturing industry. To use waste plastics derived from industrial waste as recycled material, it is also essential to confirm that they meet the quality and physical property requirements demanded of the final products. However, the information needed for this is scattered across individual operators, and a mechanism for sharing data between the waste and recycling industry, which handles the collection and processing of industrial waste, and the manufacturing sector, which uses recycled materials to produce products, has not been sufficiently established. In light of these challenges, the Hiroshima Resource Circulation Association is advancing research aimed at building a framework for collaboration between operators across the value chain and the recycling industry, and expanding the use of recycled plastics.
Going forward, NEC plans to promote the social implementation of PLA-NETJ, focusing primarily on the automotive and construction industries, based on the results of this demonstration. Through its SIP initiative, NEC aims to complete development by fiscal year 2027 and launch the service in fiscal year 2028. The company also plans to expand the platform’s scope by conducting data collaboration demonstrations for materials such as aluminum and copper, in addition to plastics. Furthermore, NEC is planning an additional demonstration using PLA-NETJ in Toyama Prefecture, where, in addition to data collaboration, it will explore optimizing the formulation of recycled plastics using materials informatics—an approach that leverages AI to streamline materials development—with the aim of stabilizing quality and improving manufacturing efficiency.
