Guest post: What a load of opportunity

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I read with interest the ‘What a load of rubbish’ article in EPPM where I was quoted as saying that the Chinese ban on the imports of recycled plastics was “a great opportunity” and I want to tell you why it still is.

It is just over six months since the Chinese ban was implemented and it is still too early to see what the implications are. Running parallel to that we have seen a huge amount of interest in plastics and how we use them sustainably including recycling them properly at the end of their life.

Blue Planet II, of course, was essential in raising the profile of sustainable plastic use, giving

unprecedented media attention to plastics and plastics recycling. This led to the UK Government responding with a consultation on how to use the tax system to

address single-use plastic waste, proposals for deposit return schemes, and the Resources and Waste Strategy is expected later this year that will contain more proposals on responsible recycling of plastics.

WRAP also recently launched the Plastics Pact that brings together brands, retailers, manufacturers, producers, recyclers, local and national government and others to attempt to meet targets on recyclability and increased recycling by 2025.

Many retailers and manufacturers have responded already with proposals. Tesco for example has developed a preferred list of materials to be used by suppliers including PET and HDPE among others. While the Co-op intends to trial more use of recycled content in water bottles, even if it leads to a slight deterioration in the transparency of the product.

All of this should be welcomed and I hope other retailers follow these examples. Working

collaboratively to ensure the materials available to recyclers are easy to recycle means everyone benefits.

Vanden has been in a prime position to respond to this increased focus on environmentally

sustainable plastic use. We could see the China ban coming well in advance. This is because we operate in Asia and understood the issues being faced there. This created the opportunity for us to invest in UK recycling. Last year, we opened our plastics

recycling facility in Peterborough, and its success so far has led to further investment. By the end of the summer, we will have our fourth recycling line up and running in this plant.

Our facility gives us the opportunity to buy and sell plastic here in the UK and process a high-quality feedstock to put back into the manufacturing process.

We expect that the current focus on sustainable plastic recycling will lead to others seeing this opportunity for investment in the UK too. But of course, it will take time for new facilities to get planning permission, install equipment and reach the point where they are recycling material ready for use in manufacturing.

But Asia will always have strong demand for recycled plastics too. This is because we manufacture there many of the goods that we buy here.

Certainly, we have seen an increase in exports to countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Poland, Turkey and other nations as a result of the ban. But these countries were growing their recycling industries anyway, seeing a manufacturing

opportunity from taking plastics, and turning them into a commodity for use in manufacturing again.

Prior to the China ban, we were seeing investment in plastic recycling in countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Turkey in particular, and many of those facilities have come onstream during the period of the ban. Investment decisions made before the Chinese announced the ban are leading to the construction of recycling facilities that are yet to open. Plus, the ban has helped to bring about further investment that will lead to new facilities opening in the coming months and years too.

As a global company, Vanden has employees based on the ground in many of these countries, working with the recyclers there on a daily basis. The facilities we work with operate with very high environmental standards to create a commodity that is used sustainably by manufacturers.

Indeed, with non-China Asia a rapidly growing manufacturing hub, it makes sense to send plastics back to the point of manufacture. It just isn’t feasible for us to use all of the plastics we generate in this country, when much of it is manufactured in Asia in the first place.

It makes much more sense to send a high quality secondary commodity to Asia and recycle that resource, than it does to send that material to an energy from waste facility in the UK or Europe and lose that resource forever.

Some of these countries also have much more expertise at recycling some specific plastics than we do. It also makes sense economically to recycle nearer to the end market to ensure the recycled commodity is competitive with virgin polymers.

There is no doubt that many of these Asian countries, plus Poland, are looking to tighten their regulations on imports, and rightly so. We should not be sending rubbish to these countries, but a high-quality product that can be recycled. It is up to us in the UK to put the right collection and processing infrastructure in place to ensure we provide them with a high-quality material. This will also ensure we meet their increasing quality standards too. Exporting high quality plastics for recycling into a commodity is often the most sustainable solution if done properly.

I’m very optimistic that the recycling industry is responding very well to the impacts of the China ban, but it is still too early to see those results in full.

David Wilson, Managing Director, Vanden UK

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