Amorepacific inks recycling deal with KORA

Lee Sang-mok, the president of Amorepacific Group, left, and Lee Myung-hwan, the board president of the Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency [AMOREPACIFIC]

Amorepacific Group and the Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency (KORA) have signed an agreement to promote the recovery and recycling of cosmetic glass bottles.
This agreement focuses on minimizing the challenges posed by the recycling of cosmetic glass bottles, which are often difficult to recycle due to the various shades of coating applied.
This agreement aims to address the challenges associated with recycling cosmetic glass bottles, which often pose recycling difficulties due to diverse coating shades.

Amorepacific is the first domestic beauty corporation to initiate a demonstration project that collects and recycles cosmetic glass bottles from multiunit housing complexes.
The company will even be collecting bottles produced by other companies, highlighting its leading role in the industry.

The demonstration project will begin on April 22, Earth Day, in select multiunit housing complexes in the Gyeonggi Province where the installation of collection boxes is feasible.
When consumers submit cosmetic glass bottles into the collection box of their apartment house, they will be picked up, sorted and shattered to be transformed into high-quality raw materials for glass through the recycling process established by the Amorepacific Group.

Amorepacific plans to initiate the “Bottle to Bottle” technique, utilizing the gathered glass as a recycled material for cosmetic containers.
The Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency manufactures collection boxes and sacks that will enable the glass bottles to be turned in separately and is working on setting up a system for picking up and recycling cosmetic glass bottles.

Lee Sang-mok, the president of Amorepacific Group, said “Amorepacific is putting efforts into all stages of the production and disposal of products.
Particularly, in the stage of disposal, we are always thinking of ways to fulfill the value of resource circulation.”
“We hope that this demonstration project will reflect some of our sincere endeavors to create sustainable products.” Lee Myung-hwan, the board president of the Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency, said, “We hope to develop improved methods for collecting cosmetic glass bottles that are difficult to recycle and further expand the contributions of producers in the process.”

From 2009 to 2023, the Amorepacific Group collected 2,473 tons of cosmetic containers from department stores, malls, Aritaum stores and other locations.
In January of this year, the company launched an online container collecting campaign at Amore Mall, pioneering resource recycling to reduce its environmental impact.

BY JEONG SEONWU [jeong.seonwu@joongang.co.kr]