China bans import of foreign plastic waste: challenges and opportunities for Europe

Europe produces 26 million tons of plastic waste every year, but recycles only 30% of it, from which 87% was shipped to China. The remaining waste was going to incineration or landfilling. Since the beginning of 2018, China banned the import of packaging waste and 23 other waste categories (e.g. waste paper, textile waste, and waste electrical and electronic equipment). After being the dominant market for waste imports for many years, with more than 50% of the global waste, China refuses to import foreign waste any longer. With China´s import ban, Europe and the rest of the world faces an important question: Who is going to recycle our plastic and packaging wastes in the future?

In a short-term, new importers will be found, for instance in Asia and Eastern Europe. This could represent a challenge and an opportunity at the same time for the countries, including the Danube region – as incineration and dumping of waste is still a common way of waste management. In the long term, other solutions are needed. Due to the low recycling-rates, a large part of the plastic garbage ends in the sea. In 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea already nowadays, numerous species of fish are found to contain plastic.

Plastics – A material of growing importance over the past 50 years

Plastic has multiple advantages. It is light, versatile, and easy and cheap to produce. Thus, it is often used in our economy and in daily life. Companies and consumers both benefit from plastic. The use of plastic production and recycling is also related to many environmental impacts, such as high dependence on fossil feedstock, high CO2 emissions and low reuse and recycling rates.

Over the past 50 years, the importance of plastic in our economy has constantly grown. Global plastic production rose from 15 million tonnes in 1960 to 314 million tonnes in 2014 to 1200 million tonnes in 2050. This leads to 26 million tonnes of plastic waste being generated in Europe every year. Of these 26 million tonnes, only 8 million tonnes are collected and only half of that is recycled. The rest goes to landfill sites (10 million tonnes) and incineration (8 million tonnes).

European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy adopted in January 2018

To tackle these challenges, the EU developed a new European Strategy for Plastics, which was adopted in January 2018. This strategy has the goal to restructure the plastic economy from production to consumption and waste management. Especially reducing the consumption of single-use plastics, restricting the use of microplastics in cosmetics and transform the way of how products are designed, produced, used, and recycled in the EU.

Under the new strategy, the European Union will:

• make recycling more profitable for business
• curb plastic waste
• fight marine litter
• support investments and innovation

These measures should influence the industry: all plastic packaging should be either reusable or recycled in a cost-effective way by 2030. At the same time, the measures aim at increasing the consumers’ awareness of consumers. This new strategy is not only linked to challenges in production, consumption and recycling of plastic, but can also lead to increased economic growth, the creation of new jobs and innovation.

MOVECO - A strategy for a circular economy in the Danube region

Within the upcoming months, the MOVECO consortium will be developing a transnational strategy for the transition to the circular economy in the Danube region. This strategy could help supporting the current developments at EU level.

More information:

• http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-5_en.htm
• http://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/plastics-strategy.pdf

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