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Introduction Plastic Recycling | Plastic Recycling - "Put a square peg into a round hole" |
Overwhelming plastic waste
Conclusion: We collect approximately only half of the consumed plastics as waste and still incinerate and land-fill three quarters of it.
What is the attractiveness of energy, water and plastic waste?All resources on earth are limited and major companies are striving to control energy, water and waste. The ongoing concentration in these markets is powered by guaranteed profit margins to be gained due to the dependence of countries, their citizens and governments on these resources. Oil prices continued to rise steadily until 2008 and, as a consequence, so did the prices for raw materials used for plastic production, which in turn led to further consolidation and job losses. In the meantime, it is no longer a secret that the national oil reserves of the United States will only suffice for another 40 years – making a forecast for the future development of plastic prices not too difficult.When the financial crisis came in 2008/2009 and the oil price crashed again, prices for commodity plastics and their raw materials decreased to an even greater extent. In the period from November 2008 until January 2009 benzene was even cheaper than oil (from which it is produced), showing the situation was not realistic. Besides the focus on the resources there exist yet other important correlations. At low oil prices investment in oil production is cut back, due to lower profitability, thus leading to a reduction of new projects, which will be taken up again when a recovering economy creates the pre-programmed supply crunch and pushes the oil price up again. The prices for plastics will of course follow.  Increasing feed-stock prices will inevitably support higher recycling costs, and thus create new, attractive and profitable industries and work places. What was considered unattractive due to low oil prices, should be today an intelligent step to achieving cost-attractive feed-stocks. The recent raw material policy of the European Commission from November 2008 concludes, that “Recycling presents a huge opportunity to reduce import dependency for raw materials,” lamenting that many end-of-life products are “illegally shipped outside the EU and are hence not recycled within the EU” 32). What logic lies behind the high and unrealistic recovery quotas of the EU Commission and the national subsidies for the collection and sorting of plastic waste (often passed on as a compulsory levy for consumers). When many of these feed-stocks, collected in the EU at great expense, are then sold cheaply to the Far East, yet ultimately return to us as cheap end-products (e.g. polyester in textile fibres or polystyrene in injection-moulded parts), does it want to further undermine the competitiveness of European production sites? If our citizens have already financed the collection of these resources, then surely it is they who should benefit from new technologies and jobs, created through the recycling of our plastic waste. Many of our products could be more competitive, if our costs were reduced through intelligent recycling and if we were able to use our waste ourselves, instead of handing it to our competitors so that they can further reduce their costs. In the mean time we get to the end of the year 2011, a second financial crisis knocks again at our door and the average oil price reached $ 80 per barrel. The oil price is at the same level it was in the beginning of 2008, before the shock of the 1st financial crisis. The raw material prices increased as well and in the present environment of civil commotion in Middle East fluctuations are pre-programmed. Since 2003 the oil price is on a rise and shows higher variability compared with the past, but on a higher level. This counts of course also for plastics and their precursors und creates a problem e.g. for producers of cars and electro(nic) devices, because it will be difficult to pass such increases in cost to consumers if their real buying power decreases. When comes the right moment in time for Europe actively to invest into new recycling technologies?
The Basel Convention from 22 March 1989, on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, is an International treaty. May be this is the more realistic explanation for part of the still not returned plastic waste, because of missing control it already arrived in Ghana or China and was burned on open fields as electro(nic) waste, to recover the metals. The smoke signals should be easily visible.
April 2008 / updated 10/2011
Dr. Gerald G. Altnau
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