PARTⅥ ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIESPREPARING THE FUTURE OF PLASTICS RECOVERY
Jean-Pierre De Grève
Deputy- Executive Director, PlasticsEurope
Email: jp.degreve@plasticseurope.org
Over the years, PlasticsEurope has been and is involved in a number of projects related
to feedstock recycling, energy recovery and mechanical recycling.
PlasticsEurope recently launched an Industry Action on Resource Efficiency to generate
new projects and steer implementation of current ones in the fields of resource efficient waste
recovery and litter prevention as well as advocating zero landfill and promoting best practicesin waste management. PlasticsEurope wants to ascertain that eco-efficient plastics waste
management best practices are implemented on a regional level, securing a mix of recycling
and energy recovery instead of a strict waste management hierarchy, and that feedstock
recycling and advanced energy recovery infrastructures are maximised.
Other projects related to mechanical recycling in which PlasticsEurope has been
involved include the WRAP project in the UK, which focuses on mixed plastics recycling,
and more specifically, the re-processing of collected mixed plastics. WRAP, an official body
created by the UK authorities, believes that mixed plastics should be re-processed rather thanincinerated to produce energy and PlasticsEurope role in the debate has been to provide themwith EU experience in the field and incorporating experience from other countries.
PlasticsEurope has also been involved in an “EU knowledge transfer” project which was
put in place to support the “divert from landfill” concept and aims at improving plastics waste
management through an EU-wide dissemination of information and expertise and regionalaction. PlasticsEurope members have been actively involved in promoting both energyrecovery and recycling waste management options in both the UK and Poland.
The industry is also contributing to an inventory of pyrolysis technologies, as well as aproject on the identification and recovery of plastic waste in five key EU countries, together
with Tecpol. PlasticsEurope has also been involved in two projects related to solid recovered
fuel (SRF), namely the NOVOX project which is an assessment of environmental permit
regulations for establishing whether operators can include SRF in such a permit(environmental permitting for biomass/SRF synergy power plant), the TAMARA Project
which analyses the synergies between biomass woodfire and SRF, and a large scaledemonstration test at SEVO (Finland) to evaluate the technical and environmental
implications of co-firing SRF in a biomass power plant.

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The 5th ISFR (October 11-14, 2009, Chengdu, China)
In addition to these projects related to plastics in general, it is worthwhile mentioning theefforts of Vinyl 2010, the organisation set up by the European PVC industry, in the fields ofmechanical and feedstock recycling. Mechanical recycling of PVC waste has been activelysupported by a dedicated organisation called Recovinyl, which was instrumental in boostingcollection of PVC waste by almost 200 kt/year. Investigations about PVC feedstock recycling
have been going on for ten years; this considerable body of knowledge will help extending therange of PVC waste which can be effectively recycled.

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