Bandai Spirits Inc. (President Hiroshi Sakakibara) announced on August 27 that the ‘Gunpla Recycling Project’ will be collaborating with companies from other industries. Kao and Lion, who deal with everyday products, are collaborating on environmental activities. BANDAI SPIRITS takes the recycled materials from two companies and uses them to make EcoPla brand Gunpla. The mix ratio is 5% recycled materials from each company per Gunpla, and 90% from BANDAI’s materials. That Gunpla will be given out for free at the hands-on recycling learning event ‘Gundam R Operation’ that BANDAI SPIRITS is holding in various places.
The “Gunpla Recycling Project” that BANDAI SPIRITS started working on in 2021 involves collecting the runners (the frame parts) that become unnecessary after someone buys a Gundam model kit, and recycling them into EcoPla-branded Gunpla. On the other hand, since 2015, Kao has been working on a sustainable initiative called ‘Recycreation,’ and Lion has been working on ‘Toothbrush Recycling.’ Kao’s recycling targets are used refill packs, Shampoo and stuff. That recycled material has been used to make toys like blocks and refill packs. Lions have a track record of make used toothbrushes into plastic products like planters and rulers. The three companies are coming together, bringing their recycling knowledge from different fields, trying to create a bigger cycle.
The efforts of the three companies toward realizing a circular society for plastic resources have been named the ‘Recycle with Everyday life Plastics! Gunpla Project.’ This collaboration is really meaningful because it teams up with everyday products that are close to consumers. So far, the opportunities to learn about Gunpla Recycling Project’s activities have been limited to Plastic model kits enthusiasts. The achievement in this cross-industry effort was getting the chance to let other groups know about what they did and that their company is environmentally conscious.
The key to plastic recycling is dealing with collecting products made of the same material efficiently and without them getting dirty. If the handling is insufficient, sorting and cleaning will take huge amounts of time and money, and you’ll end up with only a tiny bit of usable material. This has been a big obstacle for companies working on plastic recycling activities. Over the 11 years they’ve been active, the amount of plastic waste collected by the two companies is about 62 tons for Kao and a total of 33.5 tons for Lion. In contrast, BANDAI SPIRITS collected about 174 tons over five years. The difficulty of collection shows up as differences between the three companies collaborating. You can see that the Gunpla recycling project is handling obstacles pretty well. The loop of plastic resource recycling between companies can keep growing bigger as the Gunpla recycling project continues to lead the way.
