Clarissa Morawski, CEO and cofounder of circular economy non-profit Reloop, explains why Europe must transition to a circular economy in response to economic shocks caused by the war in the Middle East.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a wider war in the Middle East are causing petrochemical disruptions that are already impacting citizens through higher prices.
While there has been increased focus on enhancing Europe’s energy security in response to this crisis, too little attention has been paid to the pressing issue of our resource security, with many vital supply chains reliant on the region.
Now is the moment to redouble efforts to embed a circular economy across Europe, properly valuing and using the materials we have within our borders.
Petrochemicals, the category of oil refining that includes plastic, now account for 14% of global oil use, and the sector is expected to drive half of oil demand growth between now and 2050.
The Middle East is at the centre of global plastic production, accounting for around 40% of polyethylene exports in 2025, the material used to make items including plastic bags.
The costs of our reliance on the region are becoming clear, with prices for plastics having risen sharply since the conflict began, linked to higher crude and feedstock costs.
One European importer of raw materials told reporters that because of the crisis, for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which has uses including plastic bottles, ‘instead of $1,500/container, it’s now $3,000/tonne’.
We will all feel the impact as these costs translate into higher prices at the till. It demonstrates the problem of our economies still over-relying on virgin plastic, with just 9.5% of plastic made in 2022 having used recycled material.
Reloop’s mission is that natural resources remain resources; an approach that means we don’t waste the plastics and other materials already extracted from the natural world. At present, the majority of plastic in Europe is not recycled (only 40.7% of plastic packaging was recycled in 2022), with the material instead lost to low-value uses such as incineration or buried in landfill.
Our goal to change this system has never been more important. Policymakers have long had an understanding that protecting resources has positive environmental benefits. Now it is clear that resource security is economic security.
Our work to improve the collection of high-quality materials demonstrates these benefits. For example, Reloop supports the wide roll-out of Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) for drinks bottles and cans. Across the EU, DRS schemes – now 18 in total – result in collection rates of greater than 90% at system maturity.
This represents a huge quantity of good-quality material which is available for recycling into new products. Elsewhere, since DRS was launched in Ireland in 2024, 2.5 billion items have been recycled by the scheme.
Programmes like this, which separate uncontaminated food-grade material from other lower-quality material, allow bottle-to-bottle and can-to-can recycling where old drinks containers become new drinks containers.
In the current context, let’s be clear what this means: a security of domestic material supply which does not depend on the vagaries of international petrochemical markets. Still, even with strong collection systems in place, valuable resources are still being lost.
Mixed Residual Waste Sorting recovers valuable materials like plastics, metals, and paper from residual waste before it’s sent to landfill or incineration. Across our waste systems, recovering materials from mixed waste could reduce waste-sector emissions by up to 21% and reduce reliance on imported material. In Belgium, for example, plastic packaging recycling rates could increase from 53% to 65%.
And more widely, we must look beyond recycling, while recognising it as a foundational element of circular systems, to scaling up reuse systems (for example, coffee cup return schemes) and reducing material use.
To make the case for transformation across Europe, I was recently in Romania for the Resource Recovery Summit 2026, highlighting the investments needed to close gaps in infrastructure, technology, and market incentives.
There was growing excitement for the upcoming Circular Economy Act, expected from the European Commission in September, which will provide an important signal of how Europe intends to link economic renewal with a more robust circular economy.
Investments in this space can build stronger circular systems that can keep valuable materials within Europe, support industrial resilience and protect future generations from price shocks linked to our reliance on petrochemicals.
