Circular economy? Dutch plastic waste travels halfway around the world

When inspectors swing open the doors of the containers in the port of Rotterdam, they look at gray bales, each one meter high. It is compressed plastic waste. The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) assesses: is it dirty, does it not run off mud, does it smell clean? If everything is OK, the doors will close again. The freighter’s destination: Indonesia, Malaysia or Vietnam.

Last year, a total of 170,000,000 kilos of plastic waste went from the port of Rotterdam to countries outside the OECD. If you calculate a little more generously by also adding the destination Turkey, then 39,000,000 kilos will be added.

And while that waste does not have to be shipped halfway around the world, it can also be recycled here. Earlier this month, the ILT came up with: a critical report on such waste exports. The agency writes that more than 80 percent of all the plastic in those container ships is “easily recyclable waste film.” It is, says the ILT, “high-quality plastic.”

To better understand this phenomenon, it is good to start with the containers themselves. What exactly is in that?

That is (as far as we know) not household plastic waste. However, they are often plastics from retail. Think of the plastic waste from wholesalers, supermarkets, hardware stores and drugstores. Such as foil around stacked boxes that might otherwise fall off the forklift, or the plastic around trays with cans.

This usually concerns ‘LDPE’ (low density polyethylene). That is a simple plastic film that can simply be recycled, but there is little demand for recycling. The reason: virgin Using plastics (plastic made from crude oil) for new film is cheaper.

A few hundred euros per thousand kilos

Companies in Southeast Asia have money to spare for this plastic waste. A few hundred euros per thousand kilos, says a market expert. And since the ship that delivers orders from Asia also has to return, the transport price is low. This is how a trade is created. Our neighboring countries also make use of this: German and Belgian waste also leaves for Asia via the port of Rotterdam. This is also included in the ILT figures. Often, once compressed and in the container, it is not clear which waste is whose.

Why do these faraway countries want this waste? Officially for recycling. Companies are not allowed to ship waste that is directly intended for landfill out of the country. That should be burned here.

To make plastic waste suitable for recycling, it must be further sorted. And labels and stickers must be removed. In Southeast Asia this is done with cheap manual labor. Moreover, these countries do not have to adhere to strict European environmental standards. So it is cheaper to recycle waste in facilities in Asia.

But it is certainly not the case that 100 percent of the plastic in those containers is recycled to Asia. In practice it sometimes turns out to be too polluted. And some of it is too laborious to recycle. Environmental NGOs, such as Recycling Network Benelux, say that in practice waste intended for recycling sometimes ends up in nature.

In practice, waste export is a “lucrative and confusing business that results in environmental damage.” according to the Waste Management Association, a representative of more than fifty companies in the waste chain. Just like the ILT, this trade association is not a fan of this export. According to the association, practice shows that “environmental pollution increases uncontrollably when a country accepts plastic waste for recycling without having a waste treatment infrastructure for the residual flows from the recycling processes.”

Google ‘trash Indonesia‘. That’s a recipe for a stomach ache. Photos of tens of meters high mountains of plastic waste and rivers where the water is almost invisible due to pollution. But the question remains to what extent it is waste from Europe that is flooding countries such as Indonesia. In any case, some of the waste comes from the countries themselves. They have an underdeveloped garbage collection industry. And many more small packages (such as for detergent) are sold than here, which easily become litter. Nevertheless, next year the ILT will examine the question of whether the waste exported by the Netherlands might displace the collection of local plastic. If processing Western waste yields more money, there is a risk that it will be preferred to properly processing local waste.

Waste exports from the Netherlands to countries outside the European Union are not decreasing. It is now as high as ten years ago, according to a report by KPMG. At the time, we mainly shipped our junk to China, but that country imposed an import ban in 2018. New top importer of plastic waste: Indonesia.

Although it is not prohibited, the ILT still wants to take a stand against the phenomenon. Because there have been political plans for a ‘circular economy’ for years. For example, the Netherlands wants to halve the use of new raw materials by 2030. And that circularity is often explained by politicians as: recycling close to home. Yet the Netherlands continues to ship its waste halfway around the world.

That yields more. Using recycled foil plastic is still a voluntary and expensive matter, sees Kim Ragaert, professor of circular plastics at Maastricht University. “Plastics as a raw material are relatively cheap, ‘recyclate’ (recycled plastic as a raw material) is still more expensive.”

Ban distant waste exports

What now? European legislation is underway that will ban long-distance waste exports. The revision of the European Waste Regulation states that in (at least) 2.5 years there will be a ban on exporting waste to non-OECD countries (so Indonesia is no longer allowed, but Turkey is). Even if it may only be temporary. Non-OECD countries may submit a request to import plastic waste five years after entry into force.

Is waste exports bad, and therefore a ban good? Opinions differ on this. In any case, plastic film is at least recycled in these countries. In Western Europe this is usually not lucrative. Shipping waste for recycling is precisely circular, say proponents.

The real problem is on the demand side. There must be more demand for recycled plastic, says the Waste Management Association. This is essential for waste collectors, sorters and traders in plastic recyclate. Now there is not enough and “investments in plastic recycling capacity are uncertain.”

As long as making plastic from crude oil is cheaper than making it with recycled plastic, there is really only one solution, according to NGOs and waste companies. Namely: hard targets, imposed by the government. Do you want to make new plastic film? Fine, but add a minimum percentage of old plastic. That saves us a trip around the world for our waste.