Last November, the European Union reached an agreement to prevent the export of plastic waste to developing nations.

The Belgian industry association Valipac said that the European Union’s (EU) decision to ban exports of plastic waste to poor countries inside and outside Europe threatens to collapse the plastic collection and recycling market.

Plastic exports in Europe

On November 17, 2023, the EU banned the export of plastic waste for disposal both within and outside European territory, this as part of an agreement on the regulation of waste shipping that seeks to reduce environmental pollution and possible risks for human health.

This means that plastic waste collected in EU member countries must be stored, and eventually burned, in case no other European country can buy the material to recycle it.

The implications of the agreement

Valipac warned that without the ability to export the collected plastic and with insufficient capacity to recycle it, demand risks collapsing.

It should be noted that the industrial organization is Belgian responsible for the collection and recycling of commercial and industrial packaging waste. In that country alone, 100,000 tons of commercial plastic packaging are consumed annually, of which around 24,000 tons are currently exported outside the OECD, according to Valipac.

«So there is no solution to process up to a quarter of industrial plastic waste. There is a real risk that the market for sorting, collecting and recycling plastic packaging will collapse,” the Belgian association told Euractiv.

“We have very little recycling capacity in the EU and very little recycling uptake. “As a result, Europe’s plastic waste is mainly exported to be recycled into secondary products, such as garbage bags, while in the EU there is little demand for recycled plastic waste, resulting in low recycling capacity,” the organization added.

The cost challenge

Valipac pointed out that the current problem is that today it is more expensive to make packaging with recycled material than to use virgin plastic.

If nothing is done about it, it warns, the plastic packaging waste market risks collapsing due to the lack of sales points in Europe and the ban on exports to non-OECD countries, the association warned.