South Korea's Ministry Of Defense And Police Will Wear Uniforms From Recycled Plastic Bottles

Launching of Uniform with plastic bottle recycled materials. (Yonhap via Koreatimes)

JAKARTA - To support increasing the use of innovative products made from recycled materials, the Ministry of National Defense and the National Police Agency (NPA) have agreed to buy 12,000 new items of clothing made from transparent plastic bottles.

The agreement, which was signed on March 15, was jointly drawn up by the ministries of environment and national defense, as well as the NPA and the Korean Textile Industry Federation.

The item details of the uniform under this agreement include winter uniform, summer uniform, outdoor activity uniform, and casual duty uniform.

The Defense Ministry agreed to buy 10,000 clothes consisting of shirts and pants, while the police bought 2,000. The total budget for this procurement program is approximately 410 million won.

The environment ministry has agreed to support all recycling processes involving transparent plastic bottles, and formulate the necessary policies. The textile industry federation agreed to encourage its member companies to use recycled materials more extensively.

Illustration of plastic bottle collection facility. (Wikimedia Commons/Tomasz Sienicki)

"This is a case example of how the central government and local companies can work together to strengthen the foundation of carbon neutralization," said South Korean Environment Minister Han Jeoung-ae as reported by Koreatimes.

"Our ministry will work closely with other national organizations to build stronger sustainable societies with better recycling practices," he continued.

About 12 500-milliliter plastic bottles or five 2-liter bottles are needed to make one short sleeve t-shirt. Meanwhile, making a long-sleeved shirt requires 32 bottles of 500 milliliters.

National campaign

Since late last year, the South Korean government has sought to increase the recycling of transparent plastic bottles, by requiring residents of apartments across the country to separate them from colored plastic bottles when disposing of them.

Through an announcement that was effective from December 25, 2020, all apartment complexes in the country were ordered to prepare separate trash bags for transparent plastic bottles.

The measures proved effective, according to the Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency. During the first week, 15 recycling depots reported collecting 126 tons of transparent plastic bottles. Between February 17 and 25, the figure jumped 75 percent to 221 tons.

The ministry is closely watching whether the new move is being followed by the management office in the apartment complex. For more than a month starting in early January, the ministry and the Korea Environment Corporation dispatched officials to 1,000 large-scale apartment complexes in South Korea. The aim is to inspect the implementation of this regulation.

Illustration. Plastic bottles. (Wikimedia Commons/Martin Abegglen)

At the signing ceremony, it was shown how plastic bottles are recycled into something useful. Starting from sorting and leveling bottles to reducing their size, grinding and cleaning bottles, making them into pellets, producing threads from pellets, and finally sewing threads into clothes.

The event also showed how local clothing and wearable manufacturers such as The North Face, BLACK YAK, and Pleats Mama recycle various plastic bottles to make their clothes, backpacks, and shoes.

Minister Han added that the revision of the Law on the Promotion of Resource Saving and Recycling, which took effect this month, would force local recycled product makers to indicate how much-recycled material was used in its manufacture while obliging local governments to purchase a certain number of recycled product results.