Europe's level of PE recycling on long term rise, says PRE

The installed capacity for recycling flexible polyethylene (PE: PE-LD, PE-LLD PE-MD & PE-HD) has been increasing significantly over the last years.

Since 2015, the installed capacity for recycling flexible PE has grown approximately from 1.5 million tonnes per year to 2.3 million tonnes per year. Giving that Europe has an extrusion capacity of 7.4 million tonnes of flexible PE1 it can be assumed that the EU recycling rate for these materials is roughly 31 per cent. 174 plastics recyclers have been analysed across Europe. Five countries, Spain (18 per cent), Germany (17 per cent), Italy (13 per cent), Poland (10 per cent) and France (six per cent) represent nearly two thirds of the installed recycling capacity. The sources of the flexible PE plastics waste are Commercial and Retailer Waste (43 per cent), Production Waste (23 per cent), Agriculture waste (17 per cent), and Household packaging (13 per cent).

Ton Emans, PRE President, said: “The plastics recycling sector has been very dynamic in the last few years. This shows that the industry is paving the way to enhance the circularity of plastics. In addition, the Circular Economy Package and the Plastics Strategy give clear targets to reach. On the other hand, China’s ban on import is further driving investments in sorting and recycling plants.”

He added: “The Plastics Strategy of the Commission and the Chinese import ban have already a positive impact as we see an acceleration of new projects across Europe. This is especially the case for household flexible plastics waste. The latest technological developments enable efficient sorting, washing, extrusion and filtering of the plastics. Nonetheless, much effort is still needed in terms of Design for Recycling. Multilayers materials remain unrecyclable and thus there is a need to move to monomaterial alternatives which can be recycled. This will enable further developments in recycling of flexible plastics in Europe.”

Plastics Recyclers Europe will continue analysing the plastics recycling capacities for all plastics waste streams to monitor the progress towards circular economy.