ReMA meets with Thai government over container inspections

Recycling Materials Association (ReMA) President Robin Wiener spent three days at a metals recycling conference in Bangkok last month and, while in that city, met with a Thai government official about an uptick in container inspections of cargoes heading into that nation.

Washington-based ReMA says Wiener met with Pattarapon Limpakdee, deputy director general of the Office of Industrial Economics, which is part of the Thailand Ministry of Industry.

Wiener was in Bangkok to attend the 2025 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Recycling Metals International Conference, organized by the Beijing-based Recycling Metals Branch of the Chinese Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CMRA).

“The ASEAN market is an important growth region for our industry, and I had two opportunities during the conference to talk about the importance of the global trade from ReMA’s perspective,” Wiener says of her conversations with Limpakdee.

“Mixed metals from automobile shredding, which contain high percentages of aluminum, known as zorba in the industry, are highly valued by industrial consumers around the world. Most countries have rightfully categorized these materials as not subject to Basel [Convention] control. However, there’s a misclassification by the Thai Customs of certain recycled aluminum and copper materials—including zorba, insulated copper wire and motors—as so-called ‘e-waste,’ subject to control under the Basel Convention since Jan. 1, 2025.”

In recent weeks, the Royal Thai Government has initiated increased inspections and legal enforcement of imports of certain recycled materials, which has resulted in significant disruption at many Thai ports, according to ReMA.

The trade group says the inspection effort is the result of a too-strict interpretation of new Basel Convention amendments designed to oversee trade in recycled and recyclable electric and electronic materials.

The new amendments went into effect Jan. 1, and many governments worldwide continue to implement changes that could restrict trade in these materials, according to ReMA.

The United States is not a party to the Basel Convention, thus, a party/nonparty trade ban is in effect for Basel-controlled materials, including e-scrap. The U.S. can only trade with countries where an Article 11 alternative agreement has been reached, which can be configured as an Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Council Decision.

Thus, currently under these international obligations, parties like the Thai government must ban the import of e-scrap shipped from the U.S., according to ReMA.

However, the association says containers of nonferrous metals it considers outside the scope of the Basel Convention are being held or rejected because the materials have been deemed to be e-waste.

At the same time it has been meeting with overseas governments, ReMA says its Vice President of International Trade and Global Affairs Adam Shaffer has been raising this issue with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Commerce Department and the Minister of Commercial Affairs at the Royal Thai Embassy in Washington.

“While my goal was to ensure the Thai government understands the issue at hand, I was also able to provide the Royal Thai Embassy in [Washington] with a lot of education on our industry more broadly,” Shaffer says.

“We talked about the differentiation between municipal waste products and our materials, which are valuable manufacturing inputs. We recognize that a government-to-government solution is likely needed here, and we will continue to engage with the Commerce Department and EPA at the soonest.”

ReMA says U.S. shippers have been hit particularly hard by the inspections, adding that the actions have the potential to disrupt as much as $1.7 billion in U.S. exports to Thailand. At least one shipping line, Denmark-based Maersk, has stopped shipping recycled metals into Thailand until the issue is resolved, according to the association.

“The goal of the Basel Convention is to prevent hazardous waste and select nonhazardous waste dumping into countries that cannot properly handle these materials,” Shaffer says. “I reiterated to the Thai Embassy that their own manufacturers want these materials.”

ReMA says it also has been engaging with the Brussels-based Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) on the issue, as recyclers in other nations likewise are being affected by the Thai government’s strict interpretation of the Basel amendments, since they require prior informed consent (PIC) for imports from convention signatory nations.

On June 25, BIR submitted a letter to the Thai government regarding the association’s concerns over the interpretation of Basel Convention E-Waste Amendments regarding nonferrous metal fractions like zorba.

“While in Bangkok, Arnaud Brunet, my counterpart at BIR, and I tried to seek resolution to this issue,” Wiener says. “This is an issue that requires facilitation of government-to-government discussion. We’re trying to prevent the inadvertent misstep of expanding the Basel Convention to materials it was never intended to cover. If Thailand sets a precedent, then it will be easier for this to happen in other countries and to effectively extend the Basel Convention to nonferrous metals, which it wasn’t intended to do.”

ReMA says it also has been in talks with other stakeholders about potential short- and long-term solutions to the problem.

“Together with BIR, we have provided Mr. Limpakdee with language from the Austrian government because the Austrian government has put out clarifications to help their own customs agents understand what is and isn’t [legitimate recycled metal] product, and it includes this material [as recyclable],” Wiener says.

During his meeting with the Thai Embassy, Shaffer says he discussed the possibility of creating an export certification standard, another potential long-term solution to the problem.

“With this type of tool, governments could have the confidence that these traders are above board, understand the rules and understand our specifications,” he says.