LG Electronics (066570.KS) is moving to expand a resource recycling ecosystem across the entire process of home appliances, from production to disposal and recycling. The company will increase the recovery of waste refrigerants generated from appliances more than sevenfold to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also pursuing a pilot of its quality-verified refurbished appliance business.
According to industry sources Wednesday, LG Electronics signed an "Agreement for Fostering and Supporting Circular Economy Leading Companies and Industrial Complexes" together with the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, the Korea Environment Corporation, and major domestic companies at the POSCO Center in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
A total of 16 companies, including LG Electronics, POSCO, Hyundai Steel, and Samyang Foods, joined the agreement. The participating companies are divided into four divisions—electrical and electronics, semiconductor materials, steel, and food—and will jointly pursue resource recycling tasks including the expanded use of recycled raw materials, the circular use of process byproducts, and waste reduction through reuse and repair.
In the electrical and electronics field, LG Electronics has formed an integrated consortium with four institutions and companies—LX Pantos, Chilseo Recycling Center, Own R2 Tech, and Gyeongnam Technopark—to carry out a "project to establish a system for recovering, recycling, and refurbishing waste refrigerants from electrical and electronic products."
Under the structure, comprehensive logistics company LX Pantos will reorganize the waste appliance recovery system, while Chilseo Recycling Center handles appliance dismantling and refrigerant extraction. Own R2 Tech will then advance waste refrigerant purification technology, and Gyeongnam Technopark will prepare management standardization measures based on cooperation with local governments to verify policy effectiveness.
Marking this agreement as a starting point, LG Electronics has established a roadmap to expand refrigerant recovery to 81 tons annually by 2030, about seven times the 2024 level. This is enough to fill approximately 100,000 wall-mounted air conditioners of the 6-pyeong type. The high-purity recycled refrigerant recovered through the purification process will be reintroduced into new product manufacturing processes and after-sales service (AS) sites. The company estimated that the greenhouse gas reduction effect from this will reach about 150,000 tons, equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 30,000 passenger cars.
A pilot related to the refurbished appliance business linked to support for small business owners will also begin in earnest. The plan is to standardize the entire process from recovery, diagnosis, and repair to verification of appliances, and to provide quality assurance at the same level as new products in terms of appearance, performance, and safety. Refurbished products that complete step-by-step verification will be supplied first to small business owners through LG Electronics' B2B business operator mall in the future.
In addition, LG Electronics is continuing its customer-participation "Battery Return" campaign to collect waste batteries from vacuum cleaners. The company is also expanding the application of eco-friendly architecture, such as introducing lightweight composite fiber materials into organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV screens to reduce plastic use to about 40 percent of that of LCD TVs of the same size.
Baek Seung-tae, Vice President and head of LG Electronics' HS Business Division, said, "We will provide differentiated customer experiences with new products and solutions, while at the same time realizing sustainable future management through effective carbon reduction and the establishment of resource recycling hubs."
