Plastic wastes recycling policy

The main driving force towards recycling has been national and international plastic waste management policy. Within the EU, the policy is based on waste hierarchy, meaning that the first choice is waste prevention and then waste recovery (reuse, recycling and energy recovery), with preference to material recovery. Thus the type of legislation found is ... 

Recycling a yes score has been awarded since there is good evidence that recycling is an integral part of Union Carbide s waste management policy. Collection of paper, plastic, metal and used oil at US sites yielded more than 50 million pounds of recyclables in 1998. ... 

Policies on incineration vary from country to country, for several reasons. First, the capacity to incinerate waste in an environmentally-acceptable manner varies, as does the capacity to deal with plastics waste by mechanical or chemical recycling. National heat demand and supply, fuel prices and taxation also plays a decisive role in the choice between landfill and incineration [66]. Energy recovery should not be seen as a solution to avoid recycling plastics, but rather as a last alternative to landfill should other routes to revaluation prove not to be viable. 

Tukker A, de Groot H, Simons L, Wiegersma S. Chemical recycling of plastic waste PVC and other resins. European Coimnission, Final Report, STB-99-55 Final. TNO Institute of Strategy, Technology and Policy, Delft 1999. 

UK government recycling policy has been criticised because its targets are based on collected tonnages thus encouraging local councils to shun plastics in favour of paper and green waste collection, thus, plastic bottle and container collection facilities are less frequently found. There is a market in the UK for recycled plastics but the recyclate is frequently sourced from mainland Europe. Plastics materials recovered in the UK may not always be used in the UK. 

It may be useful to recall some facts concerning the environmental impact of plastics. Sustainability, pollution minimization, recycling and safe elimination of wastes are basic principles of environment policy. 

The environmental policy of the Japanese Government traditionally has promoted the recycling of waste plastics in Japan [27]. 

The increase is mainly due to rapid development of the plastics consumption in the developing countries. When this large captive market is taken into account, the leveling of the plastics production is expected to exceed one billion ton/year [Utracki, 1989, 1997]. At the end of its service-time most of this mass becomes a solid waste. Even if plastics constitute but a small fraction of the total waste (4-6%), such an amount represents large economic value. Many countries have adopted policy known as 3R s re-use, repair, and recycle [Banerji, 1997]. 

T. R. Curlee and S. Das, "Back to Basics The Viability of Recycling Plastics by Tertiary Processes , Working Paper 5, Yale Program on Solid Waste Policy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, Sept. 1996... 

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