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EU plea to industry to reuse more plastic lacks bite

Revealing how hard it is to end the continent’s reliance on developing countries dealing with its waste Europe has pushed back a deadline for companies to volunteer to increase their use of recycled plastics in lieu of regulation.

The pledges were due to have been made by the end of June under a European plastics strategy unveiled in January when China stopped taking the world’s Waste due to pollution concerns, focusing minds on its environmental impact.

Reuters Newsagency reports a European Union official said the deadline had been shifted to September after industry appealed for more time.

That timeline makes the fallback option of legislation highly unlikely.

The EU recycles only a quarter of the 25 to 26 million tonnes of plastics waste it produces each year.

About half of that waste was sent to China, which uses Recycled plastics to make products ranging from office furniture to cable coatings.

The EU executive wants ten million tonnes of recycled plastics to be used in new products sold in the bloc by 2025, quadrupling demand.

If company pledges do not tally up to that target, it has said it will consider further measures, including regulatory action after December.

However, few new laws will be put forth next year because of elections for European Parliament and European Commission head, not to mention Britain’s scheduled exit from the bloc.

The EU executive’s focus is on pushing through its proposal to ban throwaway plastics such as cotton buds and plastic straws and new labelling rules for plastic waste.

Without a mix of incentives and regulation to spur demand for the waste, industry said there would be no sea change in the market.

Recyclers in Europe say they are planning to scale up capacity but to make it worthwhile, there needs to be more buyers for recycled plastic closer to home.

In the meantime, they have found markets in other parts of Asia for just over half the waste that used to go to China and say much of the rest is being incinerated, raising the risk of backsliding in sorting efforts, which vary widely across the EU.

“If China no longer imports plastic waste, we cannot tell Europeans to stop sorting because we have no more buyers,” said Jean-Marc Boursier, CFO and head of recycling at French group Suez.

“The right answer is for authorities to change the paradigm and boost the incorporation of secondary materials.”

Divisions within the 28-member bloc and warnings from companies that incorporating recycled plastic will lower the quality of products and increase costs, mean enforcing its target is difficult.

Among the more ambitious to take up the challenge, Volvo, owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, has said a quarter of plastics used in its models would be from recycled materials by 2025, while Danone said its Evian plastic bottles would be made from 100 per cent recycled plastic by then.

Austrian plastics maker Borealis, which makes plastics used in products from food packaging to cars, also says it will invest more in coming years to produce “completely waste-based” recycled goods.

Reuters reports the EU official said from all along the plastics value chain had shown interest in the pledging campaign: “We think it is possible to achieve this target on a voluntary basis.”

However, other EU sources admitted the political push hung on industry goodwill and it would be difficult to even assess whether promises amounted to enough to shift demand.

Borealis CEO Alfred Stern said it was an uphill battle to make recycling profitable.

Suez and fellow French water and waste group Veolia, Europe’s biggest recycling companies, both see an eventual upside to China’s restrictions, with plastics waste a relatively small, but growing part of their business.

Industry body Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) said many of the smaller companies that handled much of the continent’s plastic waste also had plans to invest and some plastics producers were teaming up with recyclers.

“The plastics industry did not do enough to close the loop,” said PRE director Antonino Furfari.

“It realises now that the way to do that is to invest in recyclers.”

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This post first appeared on Eco Planet News, please read the originial post: here

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EU plea to industry to reuse more plastic lacks bite

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