China's ban on waste imports could cause the collection and recycling system to collapse, feeding illegal channels. Treatment facilities are lacking, while fires at storage sites are on the rise.
An ecological time bomb, ready to explode. China's ban on waste imports, which until January 2018 absorbed 72.4 per cent of the plastic waste exported by countries around the world, could have worse effects than anticipated: by 2030 we risk being overwhelmed by plastic with no idea how to manage it. In the meantime, new routes are emerging, particularly in South-East Asia, but Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia are not yet able to handle the millions of tonnes exported every year by Western countries, Italy included.
Read also: Stefano Vignaroli. Fires at waste management facilities lay bare the system's crisis
According to a recent report published by Greenpeace, "Le rotte globali, e italiane, dei rifiuti in plastica", which collects available data on waste flows to and from Europe, from 2016 to the early months of 2018 – the year of the Chinese ban – exports fell by 46 per cent, dropping from over 12 million tonnes in 2016 to just over 5 million in 2018. "The main exporters are, in order, the United States (16.5 per cent of total exports), Japan (15.3 per cent), Germany (15.6 per cent), the United Kingdom (9.4 per cent) and Belgium (6.9 per cent)," the report states. Italy ranks eleventh, accounting for 2.25 per cent of all plastic waste exported. But where does all this plastic end up? The top 5 importing countries are Malaysia (15.7 per cent of total imports), Thailand (8.1 per cent), Vietnam (7.6 per cent), Hong Kong (6.8 per cent) and the United States (6.1 per cent).
Looking at Italy's figures, the environmental association's report shows that in 2018 alone, our country exported just under 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste, primarily to Austria, Germany and Spain. As for non-European countries, the plastic that falls outside the collection and recycling system, or that simply goes unintercepted, ends up in "Malaysia (whose imports in 2018 increased by 195.4 per cent compared to 2017), Turkey (+191.5 per cent compared to 2017), Vietnam (slightly down on 2017 but up 153 per cent compared to 2016), Thailand (+770 per cent), Yemen and the United States".
The production of plastic products has been growing steadily since the early days of the industry. Single-use plastic packaging is under the spotlight, as it enters the waste stream immediately after use, contributing to a cumulative total of 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste generated worldwide. To date, as reported in the study "The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade", published in Science Advances, "only 9 per cent of plastic waste has been recycled globally, with the vast majority of global plastic waste landfilled or ending up contaminating the environment (80 per cent)". Meanwhile, it is estimated that between 4 and 12 million tonnes reach the oceans every year. According to the study's estimates, we risk ending up with 110 million tonnes (an amount hundreds of times greater than what was sent to China) by 2030.
On 18 April last year, Assoambiente, the Fise (Federazione imprese di servizi) association that represents private companies managing environmental services at national and European level, released the report "Per una Strategia Nazionale dei rifiuti", stressing that "in order to meet the European circular economy challenge (65 per cent effective recycling and 10 per cent landfill by 2035 for municipal waste), it will be necessary to significantly increase separate waste collection (up to 80 per cent, taking into account the yield rate relative to intercepted municipal waste) and our country's recycling capacity (+4 million tonnes), while limiting the landfill rate and raising the share of energy recovery from waste to 25 per cent in order to close the cycle".
Significant figures, currently beyond our reach. According to the association, 20 facilities are lacking for the main recycling chains, along with 22 anaerobic digestion plants for recycling the wet fraction, 24 waste-to-energy plants and 53 landfill sites to manage municipal and special waste flows. The entire sector would require 10 billion euros of investment in recycling, recovery and disposal facilities.
According to Greenpeace, since the Beijing government imposed its import ban, a new phenomenon peculiar to Europe has also been spreading. "This is a phenomenon of overland export to other European countries, perhaps ones that recently joined the Union, where controls are less rigorous and economic interest takes precedence over respect for legality, the environment and human health," explains Roberto Pennisi, deputy prosecutor at the Direzione nazionale antimafia, where he is responsible for drafting the chapter on eco-mafias and environmental crimes in the annual report.
That is not all. For years we have been witnessing a growing increase in fires at waste treatment and storage sites across our country. According to the penultimate Ecomafia Commission, by the end of 2017 there were 261 such fires, 47.5 per cent of them in the north. In the first six months of 2018 alone, the figure had already reached 300. "These fires, which don't just smell of burning, compromise the proper waste cycle – reduction, separate collection, reuse and recycling. And they put the health of citizens and the environment at risk because they release dioxin. It would be important to have an additional tool to help shed light on the causes and responsibilities behind these incidents and to counter their criminal echoes," wrote Rossella Muroni in La Stampa. For MP Stefano Vignaroli, interviewed by LifeGate, this amounts to "a structural crisis in the waste management system, of which fires are the most visible manifestation, alongside the growing saturation of unsorted waste disposal facilities".
Proof, perhaps, that untreated waste is the most profitable for a certain type of criminal organisation. And that fire, in the end, solves everything.