Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 our country’s recycling industry confirms itself at the forefront at European level. Separate collections have held up and some recycling chains, such as packaging, have already exceeded the objectives set by the legislation for 2025, while the restrictions for containing the virus and the drop in demand weighed on others, especially in the first half of the year. For a real ecological transition, regulatory simplification and incentives for the development of recycled products are needed. The NRP is an important opportunity to bridge the plant engineering gap in some Italian regions, to promote the efficiency of important recycling sectors and to develop technologies for new recycling processes.
And what emerges from the annual report “Italy of Recycling” produced by the Foundation for Sustainable Development and by Fise Unicircular, the Circular Economy Business Union, presented this morning in Rome.
Municipal waste in 2020 decreased by one and a half percentage points compared to the previous year, going from 30 million tons to 29.5. Special waste has increased by more than 3% from 154 million tons to 158. According to Ispra data, 120 million tons of waste are recycled, 65% of the total, while urban waste has been recycled 14 million tons. 47%. The new targets envisage recycling of 55% by 2025 and 60% by 2030. A comparison with the main European countries sees Italy second behind Germany (67%) in urban recycling; and always second after Poland (75%) for the recycling of specials.
The best recycling performance remains, undoubtedly, that of packaging which in 2020 recycled 9 and a half million tons (73%) against the 13 million released for consumption, surpassing, a few years in advance, the 65% target by 2025 envisaged by the European directive and national legislation. The same goes for the individual materials: paper (87%), glass (79%), plastic (49%), wood (62%), aluminum (69%), steel (80%).
“The Italian waste recycling system, a pillar of the circular economy and also important for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, held up well in 2020, the hardest year of the pandemic – said Edo Ronchi, president of the Sustainable Development Foundation -. Now it can play an important role in the country’s recovery. However, it must equip itself to meet the new challenges and avoid errors that could compromise its development, increasing the market for recycled materials and secondary raw materials “.
Different scenarios for the other supply chains. The WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), end-of-life vehicles and batteries do not hit the target. In 2019 the separate collection of WEEE was 39% compared to the amount released for consumption, far from that 65% of the European target. The same goes for end-of-life vehicles whose percentage of reuse and recycling (85%) remains far from the 95% forecast for 2015. The main cause is the difficulty in handling some vehicle components (dashboards, upholstery and seat covers, etc.) which are assembled in such a way as to make recovery operations ineffective. The collection rate for portable batteries and accumulators also stopped at 43%, two points below the target set for 2016.
As regards End of Life Tires, it is estimated that 82,400 tons of material have been recovered and 119,000 tons of energy recovery. A significant step forward for the circular economy of the sector came with the End of Waste decree of vulcanized rubber deriving from ELTs, especially for the restart after the health emergency from Covid-19. Growing trends are recorded for the separate collection of the organic fraction (+ 7.5%), textile waste (+ 8%) and aggregates which in 2019, one year earlier, exceeded the material recovery rate of the 70% reaching 78%.
“The recycling of waste, in addition to the value it has for the ecological transition – underlined Paolo Barbieri, president of Fise Unicircular – assumes even more strategic importance for the resilience of our economic and social system. For this reason it is necessary to create a market and a culture that adequately valorise recycled materials and products, discouraging the use of virgin raw materials and rewarding an industrial sector that has allowed the achievement of important results “.
The picture that emerges from the report sees our country positioned at the top of the European Union, both as regards the recycling of special waste (in first place with 68% against a European average of 44%) and for that of municipal waste ( in second place behind Germany). And, despite the crisis due to the pandemic, recycling remained essentially stable in 2020. This scenario allows us to look to the future with a certain optimism because waste recycling can be one of the protagonists of the country’s recovery. The new European framework that promotes a transformation towards the circular economy and the climate challenge represents an opportunity for a further leap in the development of the recycling industry in Italy. The global economic recovery, by increasing the demand for raw materials and their prices, it also generated hints of a supply crisis. Prevention, reuse and recycling become strategic activities to increase the economic resilience of our country.
