Plastic recyclers in Europe struggling to get enough plastic waste

Plastic recycling collection

Low available volumes of sorted plastic waste are negatively impacting the operations of plastic recyclers across Europe creating an obstacle to achieving the EU targets, Plastic Recyclers Europe (PRE) says.

PRE says this comes unexpectedly as for a few years the EU has been registering a decline in exports of waste while recyclers continued to upscale the installed capacities with a 60% growth in 4 years.

PRE President, Ton Emans, said: “This situation could slow down the transition towards a full plastic circularity.

“The recent EU policy and global developments have boosted massive investments in the plastic recycling capacities on the continent as in 2020 the plastic recycling industry invested €1.5bn which translates into 1.1Mt additional installed capacity when compared to the previous year and a total of €4.9bn of investments since 2017.

“However, without stable, high-quality input materials the industry’s efforts to reach the new recycling targets might be hindered. Robust sorting and collection infrastructure is a must to increase stable feedstocks for European recyclers.”

Plastic recycling in Europe is a rapidly growing sector representing over €7.7 billion in turnover.

The Chinese imports restrictions and the strengthening of the controls in the context of the Basel Convention and OECD Decision on Transboundary Movements of Waste both enabled the continuous decrease of the exported waste from 3Mt in 2014 to 1Mt in 2021.

Despite these developments and regardless of the increase in the price of sorted material pushed by the growing prices of recycled materials, PRE says no substantial additional quantities of waste are being sent to recyclers today.

PRE is calling for transparent reporting on waste generation, collection and sorting, so that missed quantities can be identified and recycled.

Out of the 30Mt waste in total being collected, with 9Mt tons of plastic waste being collected for sorting, PRE says increasing the plastic waste accumulated for recycling remains one of the key measures in Europe.

The remainder of the collected waste -21Mt – is either incinerated or landfilled.

PRE says challenging these figures is critical to divert recyclable plastic from landfills and incinerators to create economies of scale for recycled polymers.

CEO of cirplus, a European digital marketplace for circular plastics, Christian Schiller, said on the reported low availability of sorted plastic: “The latest statistics from (PRE) on the state of the European recyclables market shows a serious gap, 20 million tons, between the amount of waste generated and what is actually put on the market.

“Recyclable and recyclates must finally be traded as transparent commodity, to meet the ever-growing demand for quality recyclates world-wide.

“To achieve this, a digital system must be put in place that can navigate the complexities and fragmentation of global plastic waste markets. Waste managers should seize this opportunity and get ahead of the curve by digitalising offline processes, leading to reduced costs and potentially even turning waste streams into revenue streams.”

Privacy Overview
Circular Online

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is temporarily stored in your browser and helps our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

More information about our Cookie Policy

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly necessary cookies allow core website functionality and the website cannot be used properly without them. These cookies include session cookies and persistent cookies.

Session cookies keep track of your current visit and how you navigate the site. They only last for the duration of your visit and are deleted from your device when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies last after you’ve closed your Internet browser and enable our website to recognise you as a repeat visitor and remember your actions and preferences when you return.

Functional cookies

Third party cookies include performance cookies and targeting cookies.

Performance cookies collect information about how you use a website, e.g. which pages you go to most often, and if you get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies you personally as a visitor, although they might collect the IP address of the device you use to access the site.

Targeting cookies collect information about your browsing habits. They are usually placed by advertising networks such as Google. The cookies remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as media publishers.

Keeping these cookies enabled helps us to improve our website and display content that is more relevant to you and your interests across the Google content network.

Send this to a friend