Page 11 from: January / February 2018

TRENDS & UPDATES

11recyclinginternational.com | January/February | 2018

INdIA oN thE vERGE of EmBRACING modERN-dAy
ShIpBREAkING pRACtICES
India has drafted legislation to implement the 2009 Hong Kong Convention for
proper recycling of ships, it was announced at the International Maritime
Organisation’s 30th Assembly Session in London.
India’s Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari declared that plans are underway to
implement sustainable shipbreaking practices in the country. India has intro-
duced Shipbreaking Code 2013, he pointed out.
Gadkari observed that the Hong Kong Convention will enter into force when
ratified by 15 states, representing 40% of the world merchant shipping. Thus far,
the legislation has only been ratified by Norway, Congo, France, Belgium,
Panama and Denmark.
www.imo.org

BIG StEp foRWARd IN BIG AppLE’S
E-CyCLING

more than 260
000 tons of
discarded elec-
tronics has
been collected
for recycling
thanks to the
New York State
Electronic
Equipment
Recycling and
Reuse Act
since 2011.

This achievement was revealed in a new report pub-
lished by the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation.
‘Over the first six years of the programme, New York
state has successfully diverted hundreds of millions of
pounds of e-waste destined for landfills and combus-
tion facilities to e-waste recyclers for reuse and recy-
cling, helping conserve valuable natural resources,’
says the department’s commissioner Basil Seggos.
In the 2013-15 period, electronics manufacturers,
consumers and the state’s recycling operators assist-
ed in the recovery of approximately 300 million
pounds of e-scrap – equivalent to a statewide collec-
tion rate of more than 5 pounds per capita, the
report points out. New York’s legislators have made
available US$ 3 million in grant funding from the
state’s Environmental Protection Fund to boost
e-cycling among its municipalities.
Improvement of manufacturers’ e-waste acceptance
schemes is hailed as an important mission for the
department going forward. Additionally, legislators
will focus on product compliance, public awareness
and the influx of cathode ray tube monitors.
www.dec.ny.gov

URBAN mINE pLAtfoRm mApS mULtI-BILLIoN
RECyCLABLES potENtIAL IN EURopE
Around 18 million
tonnes of valuable
resources are thrown
away in the EU each
year – stored in end-
of-life consumer
products such as
vehicles, batteries
and electronics. This
tonnage equates to
the weight of 3 mil-
lion African ele-
phants, so the Urban
Mine Platform
reports.
The Urban Mine
Platform has built an extensive database detailing the number and types of
products placed on the market, stocks, compositions of key components,
and statistics relating to the volumes of waste generated in previous years,
allowing it to present the flows of precious and base metals as well as criti-
cal raw materials in products in use and throughout their journey to end-of-
life in the EU.
The EU, Norway and Switzerland generated around 10.5 million tonnes of
electronics scrap in 2016 – approximately 23% of the world total. Each year,
some 2 million tonnes of batteries and around 8 million tonnes of vehicles
reach their end-of-life phase, the platform adds. ‘All represent a rich source
of secondary critical raw materials,’ it is noted.
The recently-published Global e-Waste Monitor reported that the 44.7 mil-
lion tonnes of e-scrap (not including vehicles) generated in 2016 contained
Euro 55 billion worth of precious metals and other high-value materials.
Jaco Huisman of the United Nations University adds: ‘Until now, data on
such critical raw materials have been produced by a variety of institutions,
including government agencies, universities, NGOs, and industry, with the
information scattered across various databases in different formats and diffi-
cult to compare or aggregate and often representing an outdated snapshot
for a certain year only. This effort helps remedy that problem, and enables
the identification of so-called “hotspots” – the largest stocks of specific
materials.’
www.urbanmineplatform.eu

VALUE
ADDING

More than 2,000 RUF briquetti ng systems have been installed and are already running
successfully within the metal processing industry. Profi t from the advantages:

Ruf Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG
Tel. +49 (0) 8268/9090-20

www.briquetti ng.com

Briquetti ng of chips, dusts and sludges from
aluminium, cast iron, steel, copper alloys and
many other materials.

BRIQUETTING MEANS EXTRA PROFIT
RUF briquetti ng systems press loose metal chips into compact briquett es.

Volume reducti on
Recovery of coolant lubricants and oils
Reducti on in transport costs

Defi ned scrap quality
Increased value for briquett ed material
Re-melti ng is made possible

RUF_M_12_RecInt_185x62_oM_GBneu.indd 1 06.07.17 08:11

dEmANd foR RECyCLEd pApER to ExCEEd pULp
SUppLy By 1.5 mILLIoN toNNES
the market for recycled paper packaging will witness growth of 5%, reaching
US$ 139 billion this year, according to a new report published by Smithers
Pira. Paper packaging is the largest sector, accounting for some 65% of all
recycled packaging, it points out.
Demand for paper packaging will continue to grow in large part thanks to the
manufacturing economies of China and of other emerging countries. Smithers
Pira analysts estimate that annual demand for recycled paper will exceed sup-
ply by 1.5 million tonnes of recycled pulp by 2018.
Recovered paper accounts for 37% of US pulp supply, the report reveals.
Paper and paperboard recovery in the USA and Canada has increased by 81%
since 1990, leading to recycling rates of, respectively, 70% and 80% in these
two countries.
At the same time, Europe has recorded an average recycling rate of 75% for
paper, with countries such as Belgium and Austria achieving up to 90% while
many other countries in Western Europe, including the UK, are at around
80%. On the other hand, Eastern Europe and the rest of the world are still
lagging some way behind in terms of paper recovery owing to an inadequate
recycling infrastructure.
The surge in packaging used for shipping products, combined with growing
consumerism in China, is leading to a rapid increase in paper packaging
demand. This has been growing at 6.5% per annum in China since 2008,
meaning that the country’s growth rate is far higher than anywhere else in the
world.
Containerboard packaging represents the largest market for recycled paper
packaging. Around 30% of the paper and paperboard recovered in the USA is
used to produce containerboard.
www.smitherspira.com

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