Businesses trading internationally in secondary raw materials are facing several potentially challenging regulatory changes in the coming years. At the Bureau of International Recycling's convention in Barcelona last week, Antoine Stilo, Policy Officer at the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (Euric) and Ross Bartley, BIR's trade and environment director, provided an overview of revisions that were currently being considered by policymakers and warned that these threatened the recycling industry and its ability to invest in new capacity and more advanced processing technology.
The "topic of the moment" was the revision of the EU Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR), which was now being considered by the European Parliament's Environment Committee. Under the current proposal, the standard approach is a ban on exports of secondary raw materials to non-OECD countries, subject to exceptions where the importing countries authorise imports and demonstrate adequate capacity....
