A dozen environmental advocacy or anti-plastic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have issued a joint statement expressing displeasure with the European Commission’s proposed Delegated Regulation pertaining to new trade controls for plastic scrap.
The organizations, which include Greenpeace, the Basel Action Network (BAN), Rethink Plastic and Break Free From Plastic, wanted the new rules to prohibit not only the shipment of plastic scrap from European Union member states to other nations, but also across borders within the EU.
The proposed delegated act, however, does not prohibit plastic scrap from flowing from one EU nation to another. The advocacy groups says this will “leave the door wide open for EU [scrap] traders to shunt difficult-to-recycle plastics to substandard operations in poorer EU communities,” and would allow energy conversion facilities in one EU nation to accept materials from other countries.
Recycling and solid waste organizations based in Europe have not yet commented on the EC’s Delegated Regulation language, although they have issued earlier statements indicating many EU member states do not have the capacity to recycle their own discarded plastic.
The Brussels-based European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services (FEAD) wrote in a May open letter that it preferred that “proper environmental standards for shipments to third countries have to be put in place, ensuring that scrap exports can take place as an important component of the commodity market, which is crucial to more recycling.”
FEAD also wrote, “The treatment of nonrecyclable residual waste through waste-to-energy has a key role to play in a more circular economy.”
Brussels-based association Chemical Recycling Europe, in a statement it issued in June, says processes used by its member companies are distinct from energy recovery, and instead should be viewed as “upcycling” and as keeping polymers in a closed loop.
Stated the group in part, “Some plastics are more complex and some do not represent a stream economically viable for mechanical recyclers. Opening broader [discarded] plastic streams to chemical recycling would enable more plastics that are currently not being recycled to be recycled, and would therefore complement current efforts made by mechanical recyclers.”