"Serious About Reducing Plastic"... Lotte Chilsung Beverage Expands 100% Recycled Material Packaging

Sooyoung Kim, Lead of EHS Team in the Safety and Quality Division at Lotte Chilsung Beverage (center), is taking a commemorative photo related to the transparent PET resource recycling campaign, discarded inside the national park, together with Jungsik Park, Junior Staff Member, Myunghoon Kang, Assistant Manager, Kwangjae Jung, Junior Staff Member, and Hongsik Choi, Section Chief at Bukhansan National Park Office, Korea National Park Service (from left). Provided by Lotte Chilsung Beverage.

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Lotte Chilsung Beverage reduced its plastic emissions by approximately 3,000 tons last year through packaging technology innovation aimed at enhancing the sustainability of plastic containers.

On April 22, Lotte Chilsung Beverage announced that it is pursuing systematic ESG management to minimize environmental impact and ensure safe quality control across the entire process, from sourcing packaging materials to production, disposal, and recycling.

In 2024, Lotte Chilsung Beverage established the "2030 Plastic Reduction Roadmap," setting its core objective to reduce the use of virgin plastics made from petroleum-based raw materials by 20% by 2030 compared to 2023 levels.

The core pillars of the Plastic Reduction Roadmap are "lightweighting plastic containers" and "expanding the use of recycled materials." As a result of years of exploring packaging materials and assessing their suitability through two key strategies, Lotte Chilsung Beverage achieved a reduction of approximately 3,000 tons of plastic emissions last year by introducing various innovative container technologies.

The challenge of lightweighting containers was not only to reduce the amount of plastic used, but also to create packaging that satisfied quality, safety, and consumer convenience. Lotte Chilsung Beverage verified the quality stability of new packaging through a variety of test environments, including refrigerated, high-temperature, transportation, and stacking conditions. The company's packaging technologies-such as the introduction of ET-CAP (Extra Tall Cap) for bottled water, reducing the weight of container preforms, and converting to aseptic PET bottles-resulted in a reduction of approximately 2,700 tons of plastic emissions last year.

The company has reduced the weight of PET preforms, the raw material for PET bottles, by up to 5 grams per container for a variety of products ranging from carbonated drinks, coffee, and tea to soju. Last year, this lightweighting initiative led to a reduction of 1,650 tons of plastic emissions, equivalent to the weight saved from approximately 630 million products.

The expansion of recycled materials is gaining momentum following the amendment of the Enforcement Decree of the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment's "Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources," which mandates the use of at least 10% recycled content in PET bottle manufacturing starting this year. Lotte Chilsung Beverage took a proactive step by developing, in October last year, Korea's first 500mL Chilsung Cider PET bottle made from 100% recycled plastic material, a move that has been recognized as raising the standard for beverage packaging in Korea.

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