Japanese cement producers help reduce plastic waste

Japan's cement companies are investing to use more plastic waste as fuel to produce cement.

Taiheiyo Cement plans to employ new technology for efficiently making coal from plastic and deploy dedicated equipment at nine works in Japan.

Meanwhile, Sumitomo Osaka Cement is pouring CNY10bn (US$93.6m) into environmental efforts, including handling plastic waste, by FY22.

Japan shipped 1.5Mta of plastic waste abroad until 2017, according to Ministry of Finance data. This fell to 1.01Mt in 2018 and 900,000t in 2019.