South Korea: Discarded Clothing and Tires to Return as Valuable Resource Materials
In July 2026, the South Korean Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment (MCEE) and the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute announced they are officially launching a national research and development (R&D) project to recycle waste clothing and used tires into high-quality, valuable raw materials.
As reported by the MCEE, it is planned to invest a total of 73 billion South Korean Won (converted about 50 million US-Dollar) from this year (2026) through 2030 to promote the following projects:
- development of flagship recycling technologies to address the waste clothing problem (more than 17 million US-Dollar)
- and development of technologies to secure high-quality raw materials from waste tires and commercialize products (nearly 33 million US-Dollar).
Regarding textiles, the goal is to establish a circular resource system for waste clothing. According to the ministry, the project will promote “the development of an AI-based automated waste clothing sorting and screening system and technologies for converting waste clothing into recycled materials and products”. Aim is an AI-based fiber material sorting and classification system with an accuracy of over 95 percent, which is to support “the development of technologies to turn waste clothing and textile waste into raw materials for recycling into clothing, automotive interior materials, and construction and civil engineering materials”. Regarding waste tires, technologies will be developed to secure high-quality recycled raw materials and to produce tires using recycled materials.
“The project will also advance technologies for pretreating waste tires through shredding and other processes prior to pyrolysis to recover high-quality recycled carbon black, as well as technologies that enable the use of more than 15 percent recycled carbon black in the production of new tires”. In this way, the ministry intends to strengthen the circular use system by encouraging the recycling of waste clothing and waste tire materials through this technology development. It also expects this effort to contribute to achieving the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and to enable a proactive response to overseas environmental regulations, including the EU Ecodesign Regulation.
(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 3/2026, Page 21, Photo: MSV, AI-generated)
