In 2011, China revealed plans to put in place a “complete and advanced” recycling infrastructure that will recycle 70% of its major waste products by 2015.It also said it will adhere to a European standard of quality of paper, which in the case of paper means strict adherence to [quality standard] EN643.
Speaking at the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group’s packaging event on Minimising environmental impact throughout the life-cycle at the House of Lords, CPI director general David Workman questioned, panellist, Environmental Services Association economist Jacob Hayler about the waste industry’s ability to cope with the implementation of China’s strict quality material standards.
Hayler responded and said that the ESA’s members would be ready to adhere to the standards when they are implemented.
Speaking to PN after the event, Workman gave background to the issue. He said: “We consume about 10m tonnes of paper a year and we make about 5m per annum. When we collect this paper/board there is a limited UK market for it. So, we have to export it and the biggest export market is China.
“About 70% of what we export goes to China and up until recently the Chinese have been prepared to accept very low quality standards. So, it’s mainly paper mixed in with other materials.”
He said that now the Chinese authorities had decided to set up their own infrastructure and set a European standard quality of paper. The EN643 states that contamination levels should be no higher than 1.5%. However, Workman said that most exported paper contains contamination levels “way above that level”.
He added that “from a processor point of view if they are going to export to China they don’t have to do so many checks and sorting as they do when they supply to the home market”.
Workman also said that some processors prefer to sell a bale of paper to China as opposed to selling in the UK and the biggest difference is “the quality standard involved”. He said this was becoming a big issue and Defra are aware of it.
Elsewhere at the conference, Sainsbury’s head of packaging Stuart Lendrum said that the retailer was going to spend the next two years updating all of its back of pack information because of regulation to nutritional information on food packs. He said that this was an “incredibly time-consuming exercise”” and it leaves the retailer with less time to focus on other product issues.
Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle discussed the packaging industry’s link up with Wrap to help consumers tackle food waste. The campaign was launched on 5 March. Searle said news of the campaign launch received a lot of media attention and joked that its Twitter account had more “tweets than Justin Bieber”.
At the debate, Tetra Pak environment manager Gavin Landeg said that the UK’s first carton recycling plant was on track to open this summer.
