GUEST COMMENT
A call for improving European plastics recovery rates
 Heinz Schratt (Photo: PlasticsEurope) |
The European Commission's Circular Economy package asks a lot of the plastics industry, including that 55% of all plastics packaging waste be recycled by 2025. This confronts the industry with a new set of challenges and mandates even more cooperation along the entire value chain. Already today, plastics recovery practices contribute a lot to resource efficiency and sustainability – a trend plastics manufacturers want to support at the upcoming “IdentiPlast” conference, organised by PlasticsEurope and held in Vienna / Austria on 22 and 23 February 2017 (see Plasteurope.com of 21.11.2016).
The event seeks to achieve three separate goals. The first is to foster information exchange on the collection, sorting and recovery of plastics waste in Europe – showcasing the latest developments in technology and science. To that end, plastics manufacturers have been gathering for IdentiPlast for 20 years already, with the event today considered a key forum for questions pertaining to the recovery of used plastics.
In the past few years a second goal has emerged, with the choice of conference venue increasingly dictated by a focus on countries and regions that have the greatest amount of catching up to do with respect to plastics recovery. To that end, Vienna’s position in the heart of the EU’s central and southern member states will allow the event to especially address these countries, offering support in potential adjustments to their infrastructure, and building on the successes in plastics recovery achieved by other European countries.
The third and most recently adopted aim of IdentiPlast is to serve as a central forum for all discussions on the concept of the Circular Economy, envisioned by the EU Commission as a means of improving plastics waste management. For that reason, the Circular Economy theme will feature prominently in the presentations, podium discussions and numerous small-scale networking deliberations at the two-day event. The conference is aimed at plastics manufacturers and processors, brand developers, traders, administrative and bureaucratic representatives, universities, recycling and recovery specialists as well as companies already using or planning to use recyclate in their products. This diversity among participants is the prerequisite to ensuring that the information shared on plastics recovery covers everything from A to Z.
Heinz Schratt
Secretary-general PlasticsEurope Austria
The event seeks to achieve three separate goals. The first is to foster information exchange on the collection, sorting and recovery of plastics waste in Europe – showcasing the latest developments in technology and science. To that end, plastics manufacturers have been gathering for IdentiPlast for 20 years already, with the event today considered a key forum for questions pertaining to the recovery of used plastics.
In the past few years a second goal has emerged, with the choice of conference venue increasingly dictated by a focus on countries and regions that have the greatest amount of catching up to do with respect to plastics recovery. To that end, Vienna’s position in the heart of the EU’s central and southern member states will allow the event to especially address these countries, offering support in potential adjustments to their infrastructure, and building on the successes in plastics recovery achieved by other European countries.
The third and most recently adopted aim of IdentiPlast is to serve as a central forum for all discussions on the concept of the Circular Economy, envisioned by the EU Commission as a means of improving plastics waste management. For that reason, the Circular Economy theme will feature prominently in the presentations, podium discussions and numerous small-scale networking deliberations at the two-day event. The conference is aimed at plastics manufacturers and processors, brand developers, traders, administrative and bureaucratic representatives, universities, recycling and recovery specialists as well as companies already using or planning to use recyclate in their products. This diversity among participants is the prerequisite to ensuring that the information shared on plastics recovery covers everything from A to Z.
Heinz Schratt
Secretary-general PlasticsEurope Austria
09.01.2017 Plasteurope.com [235806-0]
Published on 09.01.2017