BIR Roundtable Sessions: Regulations hurting plastics recyclers

Regulations within the European Union are preventing plastics recyclers in EU member countries from shipping material to around 120 countries, according to Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) Plastics Committee Chairman Surendra Borad Patawari of Belgium-based Gemini Corp. NV. This leaves many plastics recyclers in Europe at a huge disadvantage, he adds.

In remarks made during the autumn Bureau of International Recycling meeting in Paris, Borad said while plastics recyclers from the United States shipped plastic scrap to 160 countries last year, EU exporters were limited to 74 potential outlets. A key reason behind this disparity, according to Borad, is the questionnaire sent by the European Commission’s DG Trade to non-OECD countries in which governments were asked what “wastes” they would be prepared to import from the EU.

Borad said some quickly rejected the notion of importing anything labelled as “waste,” while others gave vague answers or failed to respond at all. This exercise was fostering “confusion and misunderstanding,” and was “depriving Europeans of access to markets in over 120 countries,” he stated.

Reviewing the U.S. scrap plastic market, Borad spoke of a “bullish” mood and of a substantial scarcity of raw material due to higher domestic recycling efforts. Regarding India, Borad pointed to the new government’s determination to relax administrative burdens that has previously resulted in the issuing of scrap import licenses to only a limited number of recyclers.

Policies and regulations were also a focus of the market report from Steve Wong of Fukutomi Company Ltd., Hong Kong, and the China Scrap Plastics Association. As from January 1, 2015, he said, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection would no longer handle applications for imports of “pre-approved scrap materials. Instead, scrap plastic importers would have to apply to the municipal environmental protection department.

Also, Wong added, China’s customs office was proposing to abolish the zero-tariff preferential treatment for those scrap plastics being imported, recycled into raw materials and eventually turned into products for export. The market in China was slowing because of reduced domestic demand, he added.

Plastics recyclers in China are under pressure from high wages relative to the rest of Southeast Asia and would need to be efficient in order to survive, said Wong.

In regard to the European market, Gregory Cardot of France-based Veolia Propreté, reported a changing trend since October. “Demand for scrap is dropping and converters are buying just in time,” he said. Another speaker, Sébastien Petithuguenin of France-based Paprec, highlighted the company’s plastics recycling initiatives relating to windows and “big bag” containers.

Following the market reports, the BIR’s Plastics Committee welcomes guest speaker Naemi Denz of Germany’s VDMA, who highlighted some of the latest technologies in the plastics recycling sector. A “big development,” she said, was self-cleaning of sensors used in plastics sorting such that “maintenance is much easier than before.”

And in a statistics-rich presentation, Michel Loubry of the PlasticsEurope manufacturers association confirmed that landfilling remained the leading treatment option for post-consumer plastics in Europe, accounting for almost 10 million metric tons. Meanwhile, plastics recycling consumed 6.6 million metric tons and energy recovery reached 8.9 million metric tons.

Loubry argued that a sustainable and profitable recycling business in the future depended on driving a quality focus on collection, sorting and processing.