COPENHAGEN, Oct 28, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – EU countries need to adopt policies
to boost recycling, to help tackle growing waste, particularly from plastic
and electronics, according to two reports by the European Environment Agency
(EEA) published Monday.
“The EU must find circular and climate-friendly ways of managing its
plastic waste e.g. by increasing reuse and recycling,” the EEA said in a
statement.
The European body, headquartered in Copenhagen, said the EU produced 30
million tonnes of plastic waste in 2015, of which only 17 percent was
collected for recycling.
Conversely in 2017, demand for plastic in the 28 EU countries, Switzerland
and Norway, amounted to 51 million tonnes — mainly for use in packaging and
construction.
Annual global plastic production is also expected to double by 2035, and
almost quadruple by 2050, and European countries lack the capacity to manage
the growing amount of plastic waste in sustainable ways, one of the reports
concluded.
“Poor management of plastic waste has negative environmental and climate
effects, such as deposits of plastic and microplastics appearing on land and
in rivers and oceans worldwide,” the agency stated.
In early 2019 the EU exported 150,000 tonnes of plastic waste every month,
since European countries typically don’t sort and recycle enough of this
waste.
The figure was twice as high in 2016, when exports went mainly to China and
Hong Kong, but restrictions on waste import has lead to a decrease and a
shift of exports to other Asian countries with less strict regulations.
When is comes to electronics, of 10.3 million tonnes of waste produced in
2015, 40 percent was collected, the agency said.
Many electronic products include hazardous materials and chemicals that
pose risk to both health and the environment.
The EEA also noted that “high-quality recycling” can help to limit the
impact on climate, citing a 2016 Norwegian study that found that the
recycling of a single mobile phone saved the equivalent of one kilogram of
CO2 emissions.