Both the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place bottled water manufacturers plan to remove the trademark band
The bottled water industry is gradually expanding the production of so-called’no-label’ products without a trademark.
Last month, the Jeju Development Corporation, which produces Samdasoo, announced that it would release a no-label’Samdasoo’, and Nongshim also announced Baeksansoo without a brand in the first half of this year.
Since December of last year, the Ministry of Environment has made it mandatory to remove the trademark strip when collecting transparent PET bottles from apartments, and in December this year, the system will be expanded to general housing.
High quality recycled PET, limit only by recycling
Recycled PET recycled by collecting transparent PET bottles is mainly used to make clothes by processing it into fibers.
However, in the case of separate collection without removing the trademark strip, there is a limit to making high-quality recycled PET that can be used as a fiber because foreign substances other than pure PET material are mixed during the recycling process.
In fact, 240,000 tons of 300,000 tons of transparent PET bottles produced in Korea were recycled as of 2018, but only 10% of the total production was processed into high-quality PET due to mixing with other plastics.
The most obvious is the production of’Muravel’ products
A more reliable way to remove the label is to remove the label itself.
However, bottled water companies have been passive in producing label-free products because the advertising effect is inferior.
Lotte Chilsung, the first in the industry to sell label-free products last year, produced only about 5% of its total production, and this year, only CU and Lotte Mart were selling non-label bottled water as PB products. Eventually, the Ministry of Environment signed a business agreement with 10 domestic bottled water manufacturers last month to convert more than 20% of bottled water products into label-free.
Enables the use of advertisements for the Ministry of Environment’s’best grade’
At the same time, they also presented carrots.
In the evaluation of recyclability, label-free products were given the’Best Recycling’ rating, and this was allowed to be advertised on the product surface.
In addition, we plan to reduce the share of producer responsibility recycling by 50%.
An official in the bottled water industry explained that as consumers are increasing consumption that cares about the environment, the’best in recycling’ rating could be a major marketing point.