Duytan Recycling and journey of recycling plastic bottles

A new life cycle for plastic bottles

Director of Sustainable Development - Duy Tan Recycling Le Anh said, on average, Duytan Recycling collects about 180 tonnes of used plastic bottles, equivalent to about 10 million plastic bottles a day. Thanks to modern technology, Duytan Recycling can recycle used plastic bottles into plastic particles, which can be blown into new plastic bottles.

Recycling plastic bottles at Duytan Recycling Factory – photo: Phi Van

“Plastic bottles are revived and given a new life cycle, which can be repeated many times thanks to modern plastic recycling industry in the world, and is currently applied in Vietnam,” Le Anh said.

Duytan Recycling is proud to be one of the pioneers in Vietnam that collects used plastic bottles and the output can be exported to international markets, especially Europe and the United States.

Currently, the proportion of Duytan Recycling's recycled plastic bottles export to the US market accounts for 60 percent.

The factory of Duytan Recycling is operated based on the Three-no criteria in the production process: zero waste – zero emission – zero waste water, which does not cause environmental pollution during production process and also pays more attention to reusing energy sources in production.

However, as Vietnam now does not have a secondary raw material market in the field of recycled plastic, the collected plastic bottles of Duytan Recycling have quite high costs, resulting in high production costs and product prices.

It is estimated that Duytan Recycling can only recycle 65 to 70 percent of the collected plastic bottles as “Bottle-to-Bottle” and the remaining proportion are turned into secondary products.

Duytan Recycling Factory collects on average 180 tonnes of plastic bottles a day – photo: Phi Van

Recycled plastic products need better communications

According to Le Anh, communications on recycled plastic products needs to be promoted so that consumers can feel secure in choosing food products wrapped by packaging made from recycled plastic.

“Better communications will help consumers realize that ‘Bottle-to-Bottle’ products are good for the sustainable development of the country,” he said.

“Other pioneers like Coca-Cola or Lavie also use recycled products for the environment, and for a future of sustainable development. I personally highly appreciate these activities, which will contribute to promoting the circular economy in Vietnam.”

He added that recycling businesses like Duytan Recycling need support to find output markets. The company is responsible for the collection and recycling to ensure that the output products meet food standards.

This is a value chain, if there is the output market, the company will recycle more and collect more, thereby the plastic circular value chain will move and draw many participants.

Therefore, all of those issues need to be addressed so that using products from recycled sources will become a good habit, and a good practice. With the support of consumers for mutual benefits, then the circular chain will occur naturally.