China Ban Brings Waste 'Back to Reality', Says PRE

Plastic Recyclers Europe has warned that China’s ban on plastic scrap imports has ‘created turmoil’ in the waste market.

The latest restrictions on imports of plastic waste to China have been creating turmoil on the plastic waste markets. For many years, Europe’s waste management systems have been actively supporting and assisting the treatment of low quality plastics waste in China.

Ton Emans, Plastic Recycling Europe’s President, said: “The market is oversupplied with low qualities of plastics waste due to China’s restrictions on imports. These low qualities used to be exported as a cheap end-of-life solution for badly collected and sorted waste.

“This unfair practice, in terms of economic, social and environmental implications, is at the edge of the legal requirements imposed by the Waste Directives. As a matter of fact, exporters should have demonstrated that the exported waste is treated according to the EU standards.

“Today, this surplus is unable to be totally absorbed in EU as it does not meet the quality requirements of the European recyclers. This abrupt change in the market conditions demonstrates the urgency needed to implement a real and sustainable waste market in Europe. This can only be done by driving the quality upwards by changes in design for recycling, collection and sorting.

PRE criticised a ‘lack of vision of the value chain over the last few years’, which has now resulted in the EU being unable to treat these new increased quantities overnight.