Plastic Recycling Discussed During BIR Fall Meeting

According to speakers at the recently concluded BIR Plastics Roundtable, PET bottle recycling was a modern-day success story but still faced some very real threats. According to Jan Snellenburg of Texplast GmbH, The Netherlands, the impact of ‘unstable’ virgin prices and ‘insufficient uniformity’ in the interpretation of EU law, cheap-labor countries such as China were threatening Europe’s recycling industry by their willingness to pay prices ‘we absolutely cannot afford’.

Across the EU each year, more than 400,000 metric tons of used PET bottles were collected and recycled into fiber, sheet/film, strapping and even back into bottles, thanks in part to the fact these drinks containers were both easy to recognize and of a consistent grade. Consumers had now accepted recycled PET as a ‘reliable’ raw material, said Snellenburg. Furthermore, constant improvements in technology had meant that reclaimers were able to produce a material ‘close to virgin’ that could be used directly in food contact applications.

According to Snellenburg, PET recycling would receive a further boost if the Belgian government were to proceed with a proposal demanding the use of at least 50 percent reclaimed material in new bottles. A more general move in this direction would not only increase demand for recycled PET but would also ‘force producers to go back to transparent bottles’, he suggested.

Among the reports submitted to the Plastics Round-Table, an update from the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries suggested that Chinese demand for PET bales was continuing to underpin the market. HDPE reclaimers were feeling pressure from ‘softer’ virgin resin prices and temporarily less robust demand from overseas buyers.

India, meanwhile, was set to remain only a ‘small’ importer of plastics scrap, said Surendra Kumar Borad of Gemini Corp., Belgium. A license was required to import and recycle plastics scrap but only one of these had been issued within the previous four years. At present, a total of 26 licensed units were importing between 6,000-7,000 metric tons each month.

In one of several country reports from Europe, Jacques Musa of Soulier in France observed that PET bottle prices were increasing on an almost daily basis as demand became ever stronger.

Marc Figueras of Spain suggested only a few qualities of plastics scrap were readily saleable whereas ‘big problems’ existed for black polystyrene and HDPE. Overall, he said, it had not been a good year for his country’s plastics recyclers.

Reporting for Germany and The Netherlands, BIR Plastics Committee Chairman Peter Daalder of Daly Plastics BV in The Netherlands described exports to Asia as ‘fantastic’ while the ‘crazy’ prices being paid were, in some cases, 50 percent higher than what domestic processors were able to afford. Fortunes were mixed for the recycling sector, with many of those companies engaged in washing their material ‘losing big money’; some companies in Germany were losing 300,000 Euros a month, Daalder said.