The Association of European Plastics Recyclers is finding fault with a report recently released by the Association of Plastics Manufacturers in Europe.
The report, released the middle of last month, calculates the plastics recycling levels in Europe in 2000.
According to the EuPR, the report provides an an incomplete view of the actual market situation of the plastics recycling industry today. Based on the outcome of the study, APME concludes correctly that more volume of plastic waste has been collected in the different Member States.
Yet the conclusion that the mechanical recycling industry, of which the majority is represented by the Association of European Plastics Recyclers, has grown by 17 percent is incorrect as the industry actually has decreased in capacity.
Often the quality of the collected material does not meet the input criteria of the mechanical recycling industry as sorting is still not done correctly.
As data given by the mechanical recycling industry to contribute to a previous Sofres study have been used incorrectly, most major recyclers decided not to cooperate to this study. EuPR has repeated its proposal to APME to collect the correct data from the mechanical recycling industry in Europe for future studies. Conditions to that effect will be discussed with APME in the forthcoming months.
EuPR agrees that especially in the southern European countries new mechanical recycling installations have been put in place.
However these new capacities do by far not compensate the shutdown mainly because of bankruptcies of several mechanical recycling facilities mainly in Germany, UK and the Benelux countries.
Although Sofres concludes correctly that the exported volumes outside Europe have increased considerably, these volumes have in reality been substantially higher than reported in that study, explaining partly for the wrong conclusions made in some parts of the report.
EuPR is preparing its own report in order to update correctly the legislator about the mechanical recycling activities in Europe! This report is expected to be released before summer 2002.
Highlights of the APME report are the following:
Recycling and other recovery methods for plastics in all applications showed significant growth in 2000, reducing the amount of plastics waste going to disposal.
In 2000, the demand for plastics in Western Europe increased by three percent to 36.769 million metric tons, but recovery, through mechanical recycling, feedstock recycling and energy recovery, increased by 11 percent.
An analysis of plastics consumption and recovery in Western Europe 2000 also shows that, in spite of the increase in demand for plastics, total post-user plastics waste remains less than one percent of total waste, from all materials, at 19.54 million metric tons. Increased recovery of plastics waste, to 36 percent, has reduced the amount of plastics lost to landfill, the single most important factor to reduce the impact of waste on the environment.
Eight countries recovered more than half the waste plastics from packaging in 2000: The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Belgium. There was a significant expansion of plastics’ waste collection schemes, especially in southern Europe, which contributed to a 17 percent overall increase in mechanical recycling.
This was effected both within Europe and, increasingly, in Asian countries. A case study in the report highlights how the voluntary agreement between industry and government in The Netherlands has allowed them to achieve very high recovery of plastics packaging waste cost-effectively.
Neil Mayne, head of APME’s Technical and Environmental Centre, said, "This data shows how plastics can contribute to the goals of sustainable development. Plastics play a role in environmental protection, both through efficient use of resources, and year-on-year, reduced impact when plastics reach end-of-life. The increase in recovery we have seen in 2000 is a clear demonstration of this."
In addition to recycling, energy recovery again made an important contribution in countries achieving high levels of recovery. With energy recovery, 23 percent of plastics were given a second use in place of fossil fuels, providing a secure source of power or heat. This recovery option is particularly appropriate for mixtures of different types of plastics that cannot be efficiently recycled. In Denmark, where 83 percent of all plastics waste is recovered, energy recovery is responsible for 75 percent. In Switzerland, 73 percent of plastics waste is given a second life through energy recovery.
The consumption figures show that the strongest growth is in the electrical and electronic sector, where consumption was up over five percent to 2.67 million metric tons. For products such as computers and mobile phones, plastics provide practical benefits that other materials cannot match. Packaging remains the largest use of plastics, accounting for over 37 percent of the market, but here innovations which make packaging lighter and more resource-efficient ensured that only 2.7 percent more plastics were used in this sector than in 1999.