ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The plastic recycling industry crosses one of the most difficult stages of its recent history. To launch the alarm is Walter Regis, president of Assorimap, National Association of Recycling and Regenerators of Plastic Materials, adherent to Confimi Industria, interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the Primo Piano section of the agency Italpress.
A complex framework, the one drawn up by Regis, which calls on among other things Asian unfair competition and the lack of economic recognition of the environmental value of recycled material. “The Asian low cost product is able to reach the market with prices of 50% lower than ours,” says Regis. A competitive advantage that derives to a large extent from enormously lower energy costs than Europe, as well as less stringent regulatory and environmental standards. The result is that in the last two to three years the situation has progressively worsened: the Italian companies of the recycling have first lost margins, then turnover, and today they find themselves with useful to the historical minimums.
“The recycling industry is in great crisis,” says Assorimap.
At the heart of the problem there is a structural contradiction: “Recycled plastic has a certified and recognized environmental value – important research agencies have documented energy savings and CO2 emissions reduction compared to virgin polymer production – but this value does not result in any economic recognition for those producing recycled,” says Regis. The road indicated by Assorimap is that of white certificates or carbon credits: tools that would allow to monetize energy saving and the less emission of CO2 generated by the recycling process. The mechanism would also be virtuous on the level of redistribution of costs: to pay would be the most polluting enterprises, those that exceed the limits of contingent emission, while the recyclers – as virtuous producers – would earn the certificates. “There is no cost for the herb,” says Regis. “It is a proposal that the sector has been carrying out for at least two years, but still does not see the light,” he adds.
One of the reasons is also linked to the constraints on State aid, which make the regulatory framework even more complex. For Regis on this front “the political class as a whole must be willing to make clear choices and overcome difficulties.”
On the front of unfair competition, Assorimap also pushes for the introduction of anti-dumping measures and duties that protect the European market from Asian underprice products. A line shared by many industrial sectors of the continent, asking the European Union to defend its choices in favor of environmental sustainability with concrete tools. “The EU has made choices that propose the environmental value of productions: these choices should not be abandoned, they must be pursued,” says Regis. “We only like the duty speech in part, because we are for free competition,” he said. This is where another innovative proposal of the association comes into play: the “digital passport” of recycled materials. A tool of transparency and traceability that could become a competitive differentiation factor for the Made in Italy recycling.
In the background of these specific battles a more general problem arises. Italy is virtuous on different fronts of the circular economy – paper, glass, aluminum show good recycling performance – but on plastic the work to do is still very much. And the whole of Europe shares this delay.
“We have deepened, made important strategies on what circularity means with respect to linear production,” says Regis, “but we have not done well with the word economy when approaching the speech of circularity.”
The solution, according to Regis, requires coesion within the same plastic chain and a structured dialogue with the Ministry of the Environment, which should play a leading role in defining shared regulatory proposals. “If the chain is united we can find solutions,” concludes Assorimap.
– Photo Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
