Creating a comfortable dietary life through food tray containers

They can be found at many supermarkets nationwide.

Clean and dry them before bringing them to a box. It is easy to tell whether or not trays are recyclable.

For foamed polystyrene trays

The tray can be easily pierced by a toothpick. Trays that fall under the following cannot be recycled, even if they can be pierced by a toothpick.

For transparent containers

If the transparent container has any printed areas, be sure to cut them off before bringing the remainder to the collection box. Transparent containers falling under the following cannot be recycled.

For PET bottles

Remove the cap and the label and rinse the inside of the bottle before bringing it to the collection box. PET bottles that fall under the following cannot be recycled.

Calculated based on the shipping volume of the foamed polystyrene trays we produce and the collection volume, the current collection rate stands at around 30%.

At FPCO, we have been collecting colored trays since we began recycling.
However, some manufacturers of trays that are available in Japan do not collect colored trays because they are difficult to recycle.

To date, food trays and containers like these are classified as products that are made of non-recyclable materials.
However, FPCO is constantly upgrading its recycling technologies. For example, we put the recycling of transparent containers into full operation in 2008.
To fulfill greater producer responsibility in the foreseeable future, we will consider recycling other materials, including hard food trays and containers.
Thank you for your patience until we become able to recycle such containers into trays.

We remove all items other than used trays in the manual sorting process.
If there are any milk cartons, bottles, cans, plastic bags or any inappropriate items other than used trays,
we hand them over to the recycling operators that handle them so that they will be treated appropriately.

They can be recycled into the Eco Tray® as long as they are made of the same material. After sorting by material, we recycle all trays that can be recycled, irrespective of their manufacturers.

In FY2016, we collected white trays from 130 local governments.
In accordance with the Act on the Promotion of Sorted Collection and Recycling of Containers and Packaging,
which came into full force in April 2000, some municipal governments now collect white trays.
However, a large proportion of local governments collect used trays and other plastics together. We cannot collect them and recycle them into trays.
We therefore ask that you put used trays into collection boxes at supermarkets in areas where local governments collect them as other plastics.

Even after careful cleaning, used trays tend to have scratches, deformation or other damage.
Used trays that are conveyed in large quantities day by day vary significantly in shape and size.
It is extremely difficult to sort them into groups of trays that are completely identical in terms of size.
In addition, food trays and containers must comply with the standards under the Food Sanitation Act.
It is also difficult to meet this requirement. For these reasons, it is impossible to reutilize used trays after simply cleaning them.
Actually, it is more efficient to process collected used trays into pellets and to make pellets into trays.

The Eco Tray® can be recycled again and again. The Eco Tray® is also produced from the Eco Tray®.

At present, the Eco Tray® accounts for nearly 25% of general food trays and containers, or foamed polystyrene trays for meat and fish,
available on the market. In other words, one in four trays is an Eco Tray®. As far as FPCO’s general-purpose trays are concerned, the Eco Tray® comprises approximately 80%.

Our calculation of total CO₂ emissions at all stages from materials and manufacturing to disposal and recycling in accordance with the Product Category Rules for the EcoLeaf Environmental Label Type III for formed plastic sheet products for food applications has confirmed that the CO₂ emissions from the Eco Tray® are one third lower than those from virgin trays.

This symbol has been established by the U.S. Society of the Plastics Industry to represent the materials of containers. It is called the SPI Code.
The code number in the triangle ranges from 1 to 7. Number 6 refers to polystyrene. At present,
it is compulsory under the Act on the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources to display code number 1 only for PET as containers for three different types of products, namely non-alcoholic beverages, soy sauce and alcoholic beverages. The display of other code numbers is optional.
For this reason, whether or not marking is provided depends on the manufacturer.
We utilize the marking for our polystyrene containers for the purpose of helping consumers with proper sorting.

Basically, you do not need to remove them. However, containers with stickers that cover wide areas cannot be sorted, so we do not collect them.