BIR releases report on plastics recycling

Organization calls for governments to help recycling play a bigger role in managing end-of-life plastics.

plastics

The Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), headquartered in Brussels, has compiled an analysis that positions recycling as one of the key solutions to improved end-of-life management of plastics, which it introduced Oct. 14 during BIR World Recycling Week, a series of webinars running Oct. 12-16.

The BIR describes the 48-page report, “Recycling Plastics: Facts, Data and Policy Recommendations,” as being “heavily researched.” The organization says the report establishes the contribution of plastics to everyday life but also examines the environmental and economic harm that can be created at their end of life. “Essentially, what makes plastics useful is exactly what makes them harmful: They persist,” the report states, before explaining how recycling can play a major role in resolving the problems associated with end-of-life plastics.

According to the report, recycling is more environmentally efficient than landfill or incineration with energy recovery; it displaces virgin plastics, eliminating the more energy-intensive and environmentally destructive methods used to extract virgin materials, generating significantly lower CO2 emissions. Recycling uses up to 76 percent less energy compared with landfilling or incinerating plastics and making new virgin products. Despite these benefits, the BIR says only 10 percent of all the plastics ever produced have been recycled and that even the most developed economies only recycle 30 percent of their plastics.

Describing recycling as “a systematically under-used form of waste management,” BIR uses the report to call on governments to set up a favorable environment for plastics recycling and to increase the quality of recyclables collected. The organization says ways to do this include extended producer responsibility schemes, banning the use of prohibited chemicals in plastics, enforcing mandatory recycled-content quotas and establishing quality standards for recycled plastics.

The report also identifies a need to bring together the whole plastics value chain to collaborate on the circularity of plastics. The report urges manufacturers and producers to work with recyclers on design for recycling, facilitating the sorting of collected scrap and ensuring higher levels of recyclability.

“In a very clear and accessible way, it provides insight into how plastics recycling is organized,” Chairman of the BIR Plastics Committee Henk Alssema of Vita Plastics in the Netherlands says of the report. “It also invites the industry, manufacturers and governments to work together with the aim of closing the loops and propelling the recycling of plastics to an even higher level.”

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