As a manufacturer of a wide range of materials, Toray Group has been promoting various recycling initiatives to ensure that the earth's resources are efficiently utilized.
In the Toray Group Sustainability Vision, the Group outlines “a world where resources are sustainably managed,” as one of the perspectives of the world as envisioned in 2050. Conventional societies face a variety of problems, including the depletion of resources, marine pollution caused by large amounts of waste, and CO₂ emissions. In order to solve these problems and realize a sustainable, circular economy that makes effective use of resources, the Group facilitates recycling of plastic products, switching to biomass for raw material, adopting renewable energy and hydrogen, and reusing water, across its various technologies.
In its Medium-Term Management Program, Project AP-G 2022, Toray Group has identified realizing a circular economy as a key issue. An initiative example in this area is material recycling¹, which enables the reuse of products such as fibers/textiles, resins, and films. In addition, chemical recycling,² which converts unrecyclable products back into basic chemicals such as monomers and gases, is already implemented for nylon fiber/textile products.
Toray Group is also working to develop materials that use bio-based instead of fossil resources, and membrane-integrated bioprocess technology, which efficiently produces these raw materials. Moreover, the Group is promoting carbon recycling, the use of CO₂ as a resource with our gas separation membranes. Toray technology is also used in the materials for the wind turbine blades and hydrogen production equipment that utilize renewable energy sources to generate electricity and hydrogen used in manufacturing processes, as well as in the water treatment membranes for the reuse of wastewater.

1. 1 Material recycling is a recycling process that uses heat to convert used plastic bottles and remnants produced during manufacturing processes into yarn, staple fiber, and other materials.
2. 2 Chemical recycling is a recycling process that breaks down through depolymerization used products and remnants produced during manufacturing processes into monomers that are manufactured back into chips and then recycled into yarn, staple fiber and other materials.

Toray Group is developing biomass-based materials made from plant-based raw materials instead of fossil raw materials. For example, Toray Group mass produces partially bio-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers that are made from plant-based ethylene glycol, which is also used to make Ultrasuede^™PX ultra-microfiber non-woven fabric with suede texture. Toray Group is also prototyping a 100% bio-based PET fiber and developing membrane-integrated bioprocesses. The Group has recently developed and launched Ecodear™ N510, a nylon fiber made from 100% plant-based raw materials.

100% Bio-Based PET Fiber, Membrane-Integrated Bioprocesses

Toray Group is promoting a 100% bio-based PET material made from plant-based ethylene glycol and bio-para-xylene produced at its pilot plant, as its flagship environmentally conscious products. Toray Group seeks to launch mass production of these materials for sportswear and automotive interior applications in the early 2020s.
Toray Group is also developing a membrane-integrated bioprocess to enable bio-based raw materials to be manufactured with greater efficiency. This membrane-integrated bioprocess combines membrane separation technology and biotechnology to create new applications for water treatment membranes in processes such as saccharification, fermentation, and purification. The technology significantly improves the manufacturing of raw sugar from non-edible biomass and increases fermentation efficiency, thereby contributing to realizing a non-fossil raw material. Toray Group is currently operating a technology demonstration project for a saccharification process that produces sugars from nonedible biomass. Toray Group will work to commercialize the technology, in order to build a supply chain that produces materials and chemicals from non-edible biomass.

At Toray Group, Ecouse^™ is the unified brand for its recycled materials and products across a wide range of business segments including fibers & textiles, plastics, and films. These products include fibers made by recovering and recycling discarded PET bottles and scrap ends generated from manufacturing processes, recycled resin made from scrap ends generated during manufacturing and collected used products, as well as films made by recovering and recycling films that have been used in customer processes.
In the fiber/textile segment, Toray Group offers the CYCLEAD^™ reclaiming system for the recovery and circulation of used fibers. In 2019, Toray Group introduced the &+^™ (“And plus”) brand of recycled fibers that include Toray’s original traceability function. These fibers are made from discarded PET bottles and use filtering and cleaning technologies to remove foreign matter, resulting in a fiber with high whiteness that can be made into a wide variety of products.
Finally, Toray promotes efforts that involve developing unique material recycling systems to, for example, recover and recycle used fibers, resin, and film.

Recycled Materials ECOUSE^™

ECOUSE^™ is a textile mainly for corporate uniforms, made from reusing byproducts such as film and thread scraps from internal manufacturing processes.

• ECOUSE^™ recycled polyester fiber (product site)

Collection and Circulation Type Recycling with CYCLEAD^™

&+^™ Fiber Brand Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles

Previously, plastic bottle derived-fibers were limited in variety due to contaminants mixed into raw materials, which made it difficult to produce special cross-sections and fine fibers, as well as issues posed by fiber whiteness being impaired by yellowing from plastic bottle degradation. In response, Toray together with Kyoei Industry Co., Ltd. developed contaminant filtering technology and advanced plastic bottle cleaning techniques to stabilize the supply of raw materials that are impurity-free. Combining these technologies with Toray’s fiber production technology, it is possible to achieve diverse fabric applications with a degree of whiteness equivalent to fibers materials made directly from fossil resources. Moreover, Toray has commercialized its highly reliable polyester fiber under the &+^™ brand by incorporating its proprietary traceability technology that can detect special additives premised in with plastic bottle-based raw materials. In January 2020, Toray Industries began full-scale sales of &+^™ brand products. Going forward, the goal is to expand the scale of the brand by utilizing a diverse supply chain that includes textiles and sewn products, as well as fibers, and involves production sites around the world.

• &+^™ (product site)

1. 3 &+^™ raw pellets have better whiteness than typical recycled plastic pellets due to Toray's cleaning and filtering technologies.
2. 4 &+^™ fiber has a high degree of whiteness and can be made in a wide variety of textiles. It is therefore used in a wide range of clothing including fashion garments and sportswear, by meeting diverse needs for functionality, texture, and color variation. Clean PET bottles that have been properly sorted are transformed using various recycling processes into high-quality &+^™ PET fiber.

Promoting Recycling with UNIQLO

Together with UNIQLO, Toray is promoting new initiatives for sustainable products, with Toray supplying fibers made from recycled plastic bottles for UNIQLO’s quick-drying wear DRY-EX brand polo shirts starting in 2020.
In addition, UNIQLO stores are collecting used down items from customers to recycle the feathers. Conventionally, the stuffing in duvets and other objects incorporating down is manually removed. Such processes are arduous with Ultra Light Down items because of their thin outer fabric and complex construction. By developing special extraction machinery, Toray has fully automated cutting, stirring and separating, and recovery, for 50-fold the process capacity of manual processes, thus greatly alleviating workloads. Toray and UNIQLO are jointly developing new recycling-based down products from recycled feathers.

Expanding Recycled Grade Products by Recycling Pre-Consumer and Post-Consumer Materials

Toray Group is developing recycled grade products based on a proprietary formulation design that actively engages in both pre-consumer recycling, utilizing such byproducts as film and fiber scraps from manufacturing processes, and post-consumer recycling, utilizing used materials collected from users.
The Group also produces chemically recycled PBT grades made by depolymerizing scraps and then re-polymerizing them back into PBT. Toray will continue to meet customer needs for recycled resin by sourcing materials from diverse sources in and outside the Group.

Recycling Post-Consumer Materials and Practicing Closed Loop Recycling with Customers: Horizontal Recycling of Air-Conditioner Components

For post-consumer recycling, the Group is working with customers to establish a material recycling system for reusing fans from indoor air conditioners collected under the Home Appliances Recycling Law as new fans.
Fans installed in indoor air conditioners use glass fiber-reinforced acrylonitrile-styrene resins, and Toray’s unique collection and foreign substance removal system and materials blending method solve such problems as contamination and glass breakage during recycling as well as realize physical properties nearly equivalent to virgin materials.
The Group is currently looking at ways to work with customers to recycle in other sectors, as well.

Toray Industries is promoting pre-consumer recycling, using byproducts from the PET film LUMIRROR^™ manufacturing process in textile and resin applications, as well as for environmentally friendly film. In addition, the Company operates a recycling system for collecting waste PET film from customer manufacturing processes to be recycled and reused as raw material for film.

Reusing waste PET film from customer manufacturing processes

Toray Industries has established a recycling system to collect used films from electronic component applications and recover them for use in producing eco-friendly films, launching the Ecouse^™ series, which helps to build a sustainable economy. The company combined mechanical recycling process technology, which removes coating materials and resins from film surfaces, with foreign matter removal techniques for each manufacturing process to enable reuse of the recovered materials in films without impairing mechanical characteristics or reliability. The Ecouse^™ series of eco-friendly PET films has reduced the amount of fossil-based resin used as a raw material, and can therefore lower CO₂ emissions by up to 50% compared to conventional films. The Company will continue to make use of this system to help build a circular economy.

Due to its excellent mechanical properties, carbon fiber allows products to be lighter and last longer.
Therefore, it is a material that significantly curbs CO₂ emissions over the entire lifecycle of the products, including their operation, contributing to solutions for global environmental issues. In particular, the use of carbon fiber in environmental products such as large wind turbines, aircraft, and hydrogen tanks significantly reduces CO₂ emissions during their operation. As demand grows, market expectations for the development of carbon fiber recycling technologies are also on the rise.
The successful development of recycled carbon fiber and associated applications requires collaboration with a wide range of customers to explore various possibilities for use in specific parts and materials. Toray Industries collaborated with Toyota Tsusho Corporation in a program of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) for the development of a highly efficient recycled carbon fiber manufacturing technology that uses an innovative and energy-efficient thermal decomposition method,⁵ and completed the project in 2017. This new technology uses combustible gas from matrix resin as the energy source for the thermal decomposition process, which is the process that consumes the most energy in this type of carbon fiber recycling. As a result, the companies have significantly reduced the amount of energy consumed in the recycling process. As a result, the companies have significantly reduced energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in the recycling process to less than one-tenth of the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of virgin carbon fiber production. With an eye towards future commercialization, Toray Industries constructed and began to operate a pilot plant to test energy-efficient recycled carbon fiber manufacturing technologies. In addition, Toray Group will work with its customers to promote the development of new applications for recycled carbon fiber.
Through these efforts, the Group aims to establish a circular flow of carbon fiber that will help drive a circular economy. (See chart below.)

1. 5 Thermal decomposition method: A recycling method in which carbon fiber is recovered by heating carbon fiber composite materials and thermally decomposing the matrix resins.