"The future Waste Shipment Regulation should not hamper a well-functioning global market for the trade of recovered paper’’ said Hans van de Nes, president of ERPA, the recovered paper branch of the European Recycling Industries' Confederation (EuRIC). While acknowledging the need to "restrict exports of 'problematic waste streams' as identified in the new Circular Economy Action Plan to countries lacking a proper infrastructure" in comments on the proposed changes to EU legislation governing transfrontier movements of waste, he criticised the failure to take account of "the major differences between the various waste streams".
The proposal for revising the EU Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) completely ignores these differences, according to Mr van de Nes. This "one-size-fits all approach subjecting all waste streams to similar export restrictions without making any distinction between untreated wastes and recovered paper meeting the European standard EN 643 will result in lasting negative impacts for the EU’s recycling industry". Restricting access to global end markets would mean that the costs for collecting and processing recovered paper are no longer being covered by the revenues from sale of the recovered paper, the ERPA president cautioned. This would in turn lead to a need for financial contributions by municipalities in order to maintain "a proper separate collection" of this material stream.
ERPA pointed to paper industry statistics putting the amount of recovered paper collected in Europe at 54.4 million tonnes in 2020 and the share used in paper production within Europe at 47.9 million tonnes. "There is a lasting gap between supply and demand of around 7 million tonnes in terms of excess supply of recovered paper in Europe as observed over the past years", the organisation commented. In the absence of end markets for these around 7 million tonnes a year, "exports are vitally important for the European paper recycling industry", according to ERPA....
