On August 21, the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) held the 12th joint meeting of the Subcommittee on Plastic Resource Circulation under the Central Environment Council’s Circular Society Committee, and the Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy Working Group under the Industrial Structure Council’s Innovation and Environment Subcommittee on the Resource Circulation Economy. The meeting presented progress on the Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy and outlined the direction for future deliberations.
The Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy was formulated in May 2019 by nine relevant ministries and agencies. Based on the principle of 3R + Renewable (reduce, reuse, recycle, and transition to renewable resources), it aims to achieve six milestones by set deadlines, including a cumulative 25% reduction in single-use plastic emissions by 2030, reuse or recycling of 60% of packaging, and 100% effective utilisation of used plastics by 2035.
The meeting began by reviewing progress against these milestones. Emissions from packaging and similar products fell from 4.51 million tonnes in 2000—the year the Basic Act for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society (Japan’s overarching framework law for a circular society) was enacted—to 3.60 million tonnes in 2024, a cumulative reduction of 20.2%. A survey conducted by the Ministry of the Environment and METI covering 56 industry associations and 1,266 companies (361 valid responses) found that 17% of businesses have designed their plastic products to be reusable or recyclable; when those capable of thermal recovery are included, the figure rises to 87%. The recycling rate for packaging stands at 34.4%, and the overall effective utilisation rate for used plastics (recycling plus thermal recovery) is 89%, while the recycling rate alone remains at approximately 25%. The domestic utilisation rate of recycled materials is 4.6%, falling well short of the target of doubling the 2016 figure to 10%, and the volume of biomass plastics in product circulation is 210,000 tonnes, far from the 2030 target of approximately 2 million tonnes.
Against this backdrop, the meeting presented the structural challenges facing Japan’s domestic plastic supply and demand. Crude oil and naphtha—the feedstocks for domestic resin production (8.53 million tonnes)—are heavily import-dependent, with 95.9% of imported crude oil and 73.6% of imported naphtha sourced from the Middle East.
Meanwhile, of total plastic waste of 9.11 million tonnes, 6.08 million tonnes goes to thermal recovery (solid fuel, cement raw material, waste-to-energy incineration, etc.) and 1.01 million tonnes to simple incineration or landfill. Of the 430,000 tonnes of recycled material obtained through material recycling (1.80 million tonnes) and chemical recycling (230,000 tonnes), as much as 1.10 million tonnes—exceeding the volume fed into the domestic market—is used overseas.
The Ministry of the Environment and METI indicated a policy direction aimed at breaking away from the structural dependence on Middle Eastern crude oil and naphtha and the outflow of recycled materials overseas, by promoting material recycling and chemical recycling and accelerating the substitution of petroleum-based plastics with biomass plastics, thereby shifting toward domestic closed-loop circulation of recycled materials.
As the near-term approach to advancing this direction, the key challenge areas were consolidated into three pillars—”design,” “collection, sorting and processing,” and “demand and value creation”—and three new task forces (TFs) corresponding to each area were established for focused deliberation, with care taken to avoid overlap or inconsistency with discussions under other schemes and platforms.
The first TF, the “Sustainable Design Task Force for Plastic Packaging,” will examine, from both material recycling and chemical recycling perspectives, the materials, components and formats of packaging that impede recycling processes and the quality of recycled output, and will consider measures to promote and advance circular design. At its first meeting on September 15, the TF will identify impediments and priority issues based on survey and interview results from recycling businesses and insights from METI’s demonstration project (the CPs wide-area demonstration), and will also introduce trends in eco-design rules for packaging in Europe. At the second meeting, scheduled for around January next year, the TF will compile countermeasures informed by the interview findings and set out a policy direction for the following fiscal year.
The second TF, the “Task Force on Thorough Plastic Resource Collection and Supply Chain Optimisation,” aims to expand the volume of separately collected plastic resources from both households and businesses, and to improve the efficiency and sophistication of the supply chain covering collection, sorting and recycling. At its first meeting on September 29, the TF will draw on survey and interview results from municipalities and intermediate processing businesses to examine challenges in improving household plastic sorting participation rates, utilising Article 33 certification (a designation under Japan’s plastic recycling legislation that enables certified facilities to handle plastic waste more flexibly), and the characteristics of plastic waste that is easy or difficult to recover as a material. At the second meeting, scheduled for around February next year, the TF will compile countermeasures and priorities for expanding collection from both industrial and household sources.
The third TF, the “Task Force on Value Creation for Recycled and Bioplastics,” will work to narrow the price gap with petroleum-based plastics by examining how to credit the greenhouse gas reduction effects of recycled and bioplastics and how to label value using the mass-balance method (an accounting approach that attributes the properties of sustainable inputs to a proportional share of outputs across a mixed production system). It will also examine indicators and monitoring methods for assessing progress in plastic resource circulation. At its first meeting on September 29, the TF will consider the utilisation of compliance credits and voluntary credits, as well as value-creation measures through consumer awareness. At the second meeting, scheduled for around February next year, it will compile draft measures and policy directions.
Each TF will convene twice within fiscal year 2026, and the outcomes of their deliberations will be consolidated at a joint meeting scheduled for around March next year, at which point the overall direction for future policy measures will be determined.
【Reference】Joint Meeting of the Subcommittee on Plastic Resource Circulation (Central Environment Council) and the Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy Working Group (Industrial Structure Council) – 12th Session
【Reference】About the Plastic Resource Circulation Strategy
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