It’s a “world first,” reports The Japan Times. Japanese diaper manufacturer Unicharm has developed a recycling process that allows for the production of new diapers from used ones. The goal behind this innovation is twofold.
Firstly, it aims to reduce waste: billions of diapers are incinerated or buried each year in Japan, and their volume continues to increase. According to the company, the country “will discard 2.6 million tons of soiled diapers per year by 2030, up from around 2.2 million in 2020.”
Secondly, the goal is to meet the growing demand for adult diapers, which now surpasses that of infant diapers in a country marked by low birth rates and an aging population. “In 2024, Japan produced 9.6 billion diapers and adult diapers, compared to 8 billion for infants,” the English-language newspaper specified.
The recycling system is currently being tested in two locations in the Kagoshima prefecture in the southern part of the country. These cities, saturated with waste for several years, now recycle 80%, “four times the Japanese average.”
Recycling in a closed-loop system
The process of recycling diapers is not new. These disposable protections can be transformed into products such as toilet paper once they have been “shredded, washed, and sorted into paper pulp, plastic, and superabsorbent chemical components,” explains The Japan Times.
It is the closed-loop recycling of diapers that is presented here as a real advancement. It involves reusing the “pulp,” the main component of diapers, to then subject it to ozone treatment for sterilization, whitening, and deodorizing, as specified by the newspaper.
By 2028, the group also aims to recycle the plastic and absorbent materials of diapers to make new ones.
“The government wants, by 2030, at least 100 of the country’s more than 1,700 municipalities to start recycling diapers, or at least to have opened the debate,” concludes The Japan Times.
