Green struck film festival

Last week's opening of the 21st Tokyo International Film Festival was celebrated with an environmental theme in mind, and our good friends from Japanese chemical company Teijin, in collaboration with Coca-Cola Japan, did their part with the unrolling of their Green Carpet.

Not only is it colored green (duh!), but the carpet is made completely from around 18,000 recycled polyethylene terephtalate (PET) half-liter bottles. Teijin, by the way, is selling their polyester fiber made out of recycled PET materials under the brand ECOPET.

Coca-Cola Japan, who has been sponsoring the film festival for 4 years, decided to further raise eco-awareness at the event by installing energy-saving vending machine called the e-40⁽²⁾; easy-to-understand panels illustrating the processes of recycling bottles and cans; and bins used for the dedicated collection of empty bottles and cans at the "Recycle Station".

Teijin also made green ties, green handkerchiefs and green ribbons for the film festival personnel (I'm sure they go well with their uniforms), using their ECO CIRCLE closed loop recycling system. The technology recycles used polyester materials using chemical decomposition and creates new materials that are said to be comparable to those derived from petroleum.

The ties, chiefs and ribbons will be recycled again into polyester fibers after the film festival.

[Photo comment: Jack Nicholson is supposed to be behind this cute Meerkat but his flight to Tokyo was delayed...]