Plastic Waste Trade Binding and Pyrolysis Solution

The uneven development of the global plastic waste trade

In the 1990s, with the development of shipping, the plastic waste market is emerging in developing countries. Some recycling plants purchase waste plastics from abroad and process them into new products for sale or export. The global waste disposal industry is in a booming phase of development. As a result, shipping plastic waste to other countries became the easiest and fastest way of waste disposal commonly used in developed countries.

Science Advances, published in 2018, reported that annual global waste imports increased by 723% from 1993 to 2016, while exports increased by 817%. In 2016, about 123 countries exported 14.1 million metric tons of plastic waste for recycling. China received 7.35 million metric tons of plastic waste from 43 different countries, accounting for more than 50% of the total. High-income countries such as the US are the most significant source of plastic waste. Since 1988, 87% of plastic waste exported comes from high-income countries, totaling 71 billion dollars.

Sara Brosche, the scientific advisor for the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), said that developed countries claim to recycle hazardous waste such as plastic waste in the receiving country when it is exported, but in reality, most of these hazardous substances cannot be recycled and are instead landfilled, incinerated or run into the sea.

The difficulties of global plastic waste recycling

The difficulties of plastic waste recycling are:

1. The amount of plastic waste is so large that the capacity for recycling and processing cannot keep up with the rate of manufacturing;

2. Plastic waste destined for developing countries is difficult to identify and sort, resulting in high costs for cleaning and recycling;

3. Most developing countries do not have a regulated system of recycling networks. Individual recycling plants make up the majority, sifting through the huge piles of waste to find what is useful to them, and discarding the rest again.

According to a report published by the World Bank, only 10% of the waste exported by developed countries to low-income countries is actually recycled. 90% is burned or abandoned in illegal landfills, causing environmental pollution, as well as creating a source of infectious diseases, causing lung diseases or plant and animal deaths in the local population.

Global Joint Efforts

In September 2018, at a meeting of the Working Group of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (hereinafter referred to as the Basel Con

vention) in Geneva, Norway proposed the inclusion of plastic waste in the list of wastes subject to trade control under the Convention, and received wide support.

On May 10, 2020, 187 countries around the world unanimously adopted Norway’s proposal to make the global trade in plastic waste more transparent and regulated by requiring exporters of waste plastics to obtain pre-approval from importers of waste plastics in advance and to provide detailed descriptions of the quantities and types of waste plastic products to be exported. At this point, the trade in plastic waste really has a legally binding framework.

Vigorously develop waste plastics disposal technology and industry

Legal constraints alone are not enough. We must find a new model and technology to break the original model, to lead all waste plastics to a more reasonable direction, and to come up with feasible solutions to the problems that already exist. In the form of these serious problems, various advanced technologies for waste plastics disposal have been developed rapidly. The industrial continuous pyrolysis technology launched by Niutech is the advanced technology that is expected to realize the complete recycling of waste plastics. This technology has played an important role in dozens of waste plastic disposal projects around the world, and has solved the waste plastic problems in many countries such as the EU, Germany, the US and Korea, and has realized the industrial application of many projects. This pyrolysis technology can take plastic waste, after simple sorting, and convert it into high-value oil, realizing a wide range of high-value applications. The generated waste plastic pyrolysis oil can be used in machinery and automobile power, production of new plastic raw materials, etc. The disposal rate of this waste plastic pyrolysis equipment for plastics is close to 100%, which can help enterprises achieve great economic benefits.

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