SK Chemicals makes first delivery of recycled banners to Gyeongju

SK Chemicals said Friday it has made an initial delivery of 200 banners to Gyeongju, produced by chemically recycling discarded single-use banners.

The chemically recycled banners will be displayed at public bulletin boards and other high-traffic locations around the city. Gyeongju has designed a dedicated logo to be printed on each banner so residents can distinguish them from conventional ones.

SK Chemicals, Gyeongju, the Korea Textile Development Institute (KTDI), Daehan Media, Ri&Saeng and the Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) — six organizations in all — have been building a collaborative framework since early this year.

Together, the partners established a full commercialization chain covering collection of discarded banners, conversion into raw materials and fabric, banner manufacturing and quality verification, and final deployment.

Gyeongju set up a new public collection depot in July, replacing incineration with a system that channels all collected banners into a resource-circulation loop.

Collected banners undergo preprocessing — shredding and melting — before being fed into the chemical recycling process. SK Chemicals then applies a depolymerization process to produce recycled raw materials and fabric components.

KTDI handles yarn production, spinning the recycled material into fiber, while Daehan Media and Ri&Saeng weave the recycled yarn into banner fabric and manage product manufacturing. KORAD serves as an end-user of the chemically recycled banners.

Testing by KTDI found that yarn made from the recycled material matched petroleum-based yarn in both spinnability and fiber quality.

According to Gyeongju, the city's recycling rate for discarded banners has risen from 10 percent last year to 24.5 percent this year since the public collection depot began operating.

Gyeongju plans to expand collection to include illegally posted banners, reform relevant regulations to embed a local circular economy, and shift to a permanent year-round operating system starting next year. Daehan Media and Ri&Saeng are pursuing environmental certification for the chemically recycled banner fabric.

Ko Jeong-seok, head of SK Chemicals' recycling division, said the project represents "the first fruit of a concerted effort by diverse stakeholders — companies with materials and yarn technology, a local government and end-users — and we will make company-wide efforts to expand this model of cooperation."