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Avoid clamour for scrap export restrictions, recyclers insist

Recyclers across Europe are urging policy makers to understand that the export of scrap is vital for a thriving domestic recycling sector.

The umbrella organisation EuRIC is concerned at calls from elements of the steel and aluminium industries to restrict scrap exports to ensure they are available for EU-based smelters.

But EuRIC warns that scrap exports have been keeping recycling businesses alive, serving as a counterbalance to the extremely low EU demand for recycled materials.

Detrimental

‘Closing the EU borders for scrap exports will have detrimental consequences to the environment, the economy and EU’s competitiveness,’ it says in a media statement.

It acknowledges the ‘prolonged decline’ of European steel and aluminium production is concerning for recyclers, as it threatens Europe’s competitiveness and ‘green’ and digital transitions. 

But EuRIC argues: ‘Any calls by the European steel and aluminium industry to restrict scrap exports are completely unjustifiable and unacceptable, especially when the supply of recycled scrap has never been the reason behind any decreased activity of EU mills.’

‘Circularity backbone’

It insists that trade challenges cannot be addressed through protectionism and insists that protectionist measures must not work against the European recycling industry – ‘Europe’s circularity backbone’.

‘We urge EU policymakers to preserve open trade and carefully consider the EU recycling industry’s contributions to the EU economy and sustainability, and to only endorse measures that encourage them to keep innovating and generating resources, instead of hampering them and threatening their very existence.’

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