| As the new pneumonia epidemic intensified in Europe, the prevention and control measures taken by European countries have stepped up, and the recycling industry's concerns about the long-term impact of the epidemic in Europe's main recycling market have risen sharply.
According to industry sources, the current concerns are:
Recycled volume becomes less;
Potential loss of downstream demand in the non-packaging industry;
Logistics interruption;
Buyers give up sustainability measures;
Reduce necessary long-term investment.
Affected by the isolation of season and epidemic situation
Even during the past weekend, industry sources revealed that concerns about the recycling industry are limited to the effects of price competition from nascent plastics and limited customer relationships with countries like Italy.
The reason is that the new coronavirus has a major impact on petrochemical products, hindering the global supply chain, changing the way consumers demand and causing market shocks. At the same time, due to the continuing price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, crude oil prices have plummeted, and the nascent plastics markets across Europe have also fallen, which has caused the industry to worry about the impact of price competition from nascent plastics.
In addition, although some buyers have issued other warnings, the recycling market is largely considered normal. However, this situation is currently changing.
Regarding the most commonly used recycled materials in the European region-the recycled PET (R-PET) market, industry sources also revealed that they have found that consumer behavior habits have changed, especially in terms of purchasing habits and recycling habits.
A German recycler said on Tuesday: "People buy bottled water and do not take it back for recycling, but store it." As Europeans start panicking to buy food and other necessities, the demand for newborn PET in March has greatly increased.
Under the epidemic, the consumption habits of European citizens have changed, and recycling activities have been less active, leading to a reduction in recycling volume.
"On the one hand, this is affected by the February and March season routines, because people drink less bottled drinks in winter. On the other hand, it takes a lot of time to purchase, so consumers store bottles at home, and some people change Use glass bottles." The recycler added.
Germany is one of the most mature accumulation return plans (DRS) in Europe. Under this plan, consumers return used PET bottles to merchants through vending and recycling machines installed in supermarkets and other places. Nowadays, in the case of social distance and self-isolation under the epidemic, how much impact will it have on the recycling industry in the country? It is still to be evaluated.
As mentioned earlier, the consumption of bottled beverages has fallen, which has led to a tight supply of recycled plastic bottles. Therefore, many people will be more concerned about how to send used PET bottles to the recycling stream during the outbreak.
At the same time, the epidemic situation may also affect the peak season of bottled beverage consumption. If you still need to maintain social distance in the summer, people may not have many opportunities to go out, which will lead to a reduction in the source of R-PET materials.
Affected by the epidemic isolation measures, this year's bottled beverage sales season will be affected.
In other important fields of recycled polymers, such as recycled polyethylene (R-PE) and recycled polypropylene (R-PP), similar recovery rates are expected to decline.
Recycled polyethylene (R-PE) also has a declining consumer demand.
"We plan to reduce the amount of material entering the factory in the next few weeks," said a large French waste collection and reprocessing company.
Signs of reduced collection rates usually take a few weeks to show up on the market, because it takes a while to send post-consumer or post-industrial materials to the recycling chain. This means that there will be shortages at the beginning of the peak season of R-PET and recycled polyolefin (R-PO). However, given the uncertainty of demand, the peak season in 2020 may not come as scheduled.
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