Recovery of plastics growing steadily in EU

07-Aug-06

Last year, new requirements set by the European Commission almost doubled packaging recycling targets for the bloc's 25 members. This puts additional cost pressures on the food industry as an increasing amount of food and drink products are being packaged in plastic, specially PET, due to its lighter weight and convenience in comparison to glass. There have been many recycling initiatives by both central and local governments within Europe, which are committed to seeing ever higher levels of waste recovery and a decrease in the amount of waste materials being consigned to landfill sites. Commercial operations too naturally want to recycle plastics waste to re-use it and cut down on the cost of buying virgin polymer, as per a report by Applied Market Information (AMI). The report states that Germany has 21.4% of the plastics recycling plants in the EU, also the largest number of plastics recycling plants in Europe. UK has 14.3%, 13% are based in Italy, 8.9% in France and 7.6% in Spain. The survey of 1,000 companies indicates that the most important source of raw materials for recyclers is the industrial market. About 90% of companies source materials from this sector. Less than 10% is from the agricultural sector. The profile of the recycling companies is varied: some companies mainly act as toll recyclers for industrial clients, while others concentrate on recycling many different materials including plastics. Few use recycled materials as a raw material to manufacture other raw materials or finished products. As it is much easier to recycle material in clean condition and pre-sorted into the different plastics, majority of the companies take clean uncontaminated waste. 40% are able to use supplies of soiled mixed waste, and about 13% of companies are able to handle wet plastics waste. Europe's largest recycling company is estimated to reprocess in excess of 200,000 tpa of waste at plants in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.