"Easy PET Bottle Recycling"... Ministry of Environment Allows Sale of Drinking Water Without Label Bands

Reference photo

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bo-kyung] Water bottles without labels will be introduced to promote PET bottle recycling.

The Ministry of Environment will implement the revised "Standards and Regulations for Drinking Water and Labeling Standards" starting from the 4th. Through this, multi-pack bottled water products will be sold without labels, and for individually sold bottled water, labels can be attached to the bottle caps for production and sale.

Until now, labels were attached to the body of individually sold bottled water containers, causing additional waste during collection and inconvenience in the recycling process due to the need to separate the labels again.

With this system improvement, the use of labels will decrease, and when a label band is attached to the bottle cap, the PET bottle body and label will naturally separate during consumption and disposal.

Assuming that all bottled water containers will apply no-label packaging in the future, it is expected that up to 2,460 tons of plastic waste will be reduced annually. The label weighs about 0.5g per bottle, and more than 4 billion bottled water PET bottles are manufactured and sold annually in Korea.

For multi-pack products (such as 2ℓ × 6 packs), production of no-label products is allowed, but labeling information must be displayed on the outer packaging of the multi-pack. It is recommended to keep the packaging with the labeling information until all the product is consumed.

However, to allow consumers to easily identify important information such as expiration dates, mandatory labeling must also be separately displayed on the container (body or bottle cap) for both individual and multi-pack products. Mandatory labeling includes product name, expiration date, source of water, contact information, etc.

The Ministry of Environment plans to go through a guidance period mixing existing production methods and the improved system production methods, and will consider allowing only no-label products for multi-pack products in the future.

This system improvement, along with the "Packaging Recycling Ease Grade Evaluation System" implemented since December last year, will provide benefits such as up to a 50% reduction in recycling fees for manufacturers. The Ministry of Environment has set standards so that labels attached to bottle caps and no-label products can receive the highest "Excellent" grade in recycling ease evaluations.

Shin Jin-su, Director of the Water Integration Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Environment, stated, "We expect this system improvement to contribute to suppressing plastic generation and promoting recycling," and added, "We hope it will be a green light for the green transition, serving as a model case for spreading to similar industries."