Don't get over-reliant on strong overseas demand, warns recycler
Published by www.mrw.co.uk on 11/05/09
A UK plastics trader and recycler has warned the industry not to get complacent with the current strong demand for material from China.
AWS eco plastics commercial director Duncan Oakes said: “Demand should be lower as the Chinese economy is shrinking, compared to what it was in the past. But at the moment you can sell more than you can buy.”
Last week, the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) released the details of its China Market Sentiment survey, conducted with over 100 paper and plastics reprocessors in China. This suggested Chinese reprocessors were likely to continue buying UK material although WRAP director Marcus Gover re-emphasised WRAP’s view that materials quality plays an important role.
Oakes said the current strong overseas demand and prices meant plastics traders were “playing the market” and also resulted in poor quality material being shipped abroad. He said material that is shipped abroad is often material that is too contaminated for recycling in the UK.
“There is still a lot of heavily contaminated material being shipped abroad. And if you think that every tonne of material exported can earn a Packaging Export Recovery Note (PERN) then this is falsifying the figures. It is not in a waste company’s interest to do anything about this. Why would you when you can get plastic prices for paper?”
He called for more honesty and integrity in the recycling sector and argued that stronger policing is needed to prevent highly contaminated bales leaving the country - which are giving the UK a poor reputation for quality overseas.
“I was out in China last October/November time and all the suppliers there considered English material to be of poor quality. Because of that, as a nation, we probably achieve lower prices.”
As well as stronger enforcement Oakes called for a better grading system for recovered plastics, so more consistency can be achieved across suppliers.
Oakes added that councils also had a role to play in ensuring material they thought was being reprocessed in the UK really was. “I’ve seen plastics that were still in their council kerbside bags on a visit to China. When we came back and spoke to the councils they were shocked that their material, which they thought was being recycled in the UK, had ended up in China. But they then took no action.”
