Turkey has announced a ban on imports of polyethylene waste starting 3 July 2021, a move that could force some European recycling companies to burn such material.

Media reports say the country approved the ban on 18 May 2021 for materials under commodity code 3915.10.00.00 00, which covers waste and scrap HDPE and LDPE.

Turkish plastics industry organisation Pagder (Istanbul; www.pagder.org) came out against the ban, tweeting, “The solution is not prohibition, but strict control!” Association president Selcuk Gulsun assailed the decision to stop imports, using the social media platform to voice his concern. “To deeply punish the recycling industry for bad examples is to put a knife in the country’s economy,” he wrote, adding that hundreds of thousands of workers could lose their job security.

On Twitter, Greenpeace lauded the block on shipments: “A big win this week for people in Turkey who have been campaigning long and hard to ban plastic waste imports.” The environmental group recently published a scathing report about plastics rubbish sent to the country, with the government ordering the return of some of the materials to Germany (see Plasteurope.com of 25.05.2021).

The end of plastic waste shipments will likely hurt Turkish plastics processors: earlier this year they vowed to use recyclate when possible and forego virgin material, a scheme that reportedly lowered prices for new resins (see Plasteurope.com of 29.04.2021).

The ban is bound to send shudders through the recycling industry as the Anatolian peninsula served as a leading destination for plastics waste. Simon Ellin, chief executive of the UK-based Recycling Association (Daventry; www.therecyclingassociation.com) told Politico that the decision was a “seminal moment” that could radically reshape the global recycling industry.

“I have no idea where the waste that has been going to Turkey will go now,” Ellin was quoted as saying, noting that it will take years before the UK has sufficiently scaled up its own recycling capacity. “I suspect the next best option in the short term is waste-to-energy.”

Industry association Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE, Brussels / Belgium; www.plasticsrecyclers.eu) said the Turkish ban follows China’s decision to block plastic waste imports (see Plasteurope.com of 26.07.2017), and the recent update to the Basel convention, which ends some shipments of polymer refuse (see Plasteurope.com of 14.01.2021). The association called for improvements in collection and sorting schemes to improve recycling in the countries producing the plastics products. “Design for recycling is yet another example that must be fully implemented to allow for high-quality and cost-efficient recycling, and to eventually divert these new tonnages away from landfills, incineration, or exports to countries with lower standards of waste treatment.”, PRE said.

“Additionally, new recycling capacities must continue to grow (they are estimated at 8.5m t in Europe for 2019 and 6.5m t for 2016) to accommodate the new tonnages and to equally achieve the new EU recycling targets. The future growth of the installed capacities will vary depending on the type of waste stream but, taking into considerations the EU recycling targets, it will continue with the upward trend.”