The plastic recycling sector has been raising alarms for months, but the crisis that exploded today is not a surprise.
The Italian supply chain finds itself squeezed between two factors: high production costs and the arrival on the European market of virgin plastic at rock-bottom prices, largely imported from Asia. The result is paradoxical: recycling costs more than buying new plastic, making recycled material uncompetitive.
A 2024 European Court of Auditors audit (published in May 2024) anticipated this scenario. The report states that in Italy and other Member States visited “there was no economically sustainable market outlet for most of the plastic sent to recyclers”, precisely because virgin material was more convenient. Essentially, for most of the material, the Organization for Producer Responsibility (EPR) had to pay recyclers to receive the waste.
The auditors had also reported another problem: insufficient controls on actual recycling operations and difficulties for member states in verifying what happens to plastic exported outside the EU. These critical issues, added to other problems – such as the lack of guarantees that the waste declared is in fact subjected to treatment due to the derogation on the calculation point – have over time produced a system exposed to the imbalances of the global market.
Plants stopped and collections blocked
Today that fragility has become a block. Italian plastic recycling plants are stopping production because they are unable to sell the recycled material. And when recyclers close, what is upstream also stops: the sorting plants and, in some areas, even separate waste collection. This happens because they run out of storage limits.
In Southern Italy several municipalities have already started to suspend the collection of plastic packaging. The crisis also directly affects PET bottles.
According to Antonio Dentis, president of the Coripet consortium, today “we are below 16% of recycled content in bottles and there is a huge problem: the law obliges but does not sanction”. Dentis points out that those who use r-PET “pay up to double compared to virgin polymers imported from Asia”. The result is a dumping effect that penalizes those who invest in quality recycling. The objectives of the SUP (Single-Use Plastics) Directive should be remembered here, which require reaching a recycled content of 25% in PET bottles by 2025 and 30% in all beverage bottles by 2030.
Under these conditions, EU targets on recycled content and bottle collection become difficult to achieve. But at the same time, the crisis is pushing the sector towards structural tools that in Italy have been postponed for a long time. These include the security deposit system for beverage packaging, known as DRS.
What is DRS and why it works
According to Silvia Ricci, coordinator of the “A Buon Rendere” campaign, the DRS is not a magic wand to solve the problems of all flows or types of plastic packaging, but “the only system that has proven capable of intercepting up to 98% of plastic bottles and other beverage packaging released for consumption”.
The mechanism is simple: the consumer pays a small deposit at the time of purchase and recovers it by returning the container. This produces a flow of clean bottles not mixed with other packaging, ideal for “bottle to bottle” recycling suitable for food contact. It is a huge difference compared to the current system, in which PET beverage bottles end up together with many other packaging, with high waste percentages and significant costs for Municipalities.
In countries that have introduced DRS, the quality of the material and the stability of the recycling market have improved rapidly. Austria, despite having a plastic recycling rate that is half ours, has already increased bottle collection by ten percentage points. Romania has almost reached 90% in two years. All data that confirms the effectiveness of the model, which also applies to plastic, glass and metal beverage packaging.
The return of the DRS to the political debate
Italian politics, after years of stalemate, seems to have started moving again. Two legislative proposals – one from the Democratic Party and one from the 5 Star Movement – have brought the DRS back to the center of attention. For the first time, even a member of the majority declared openness to the measure.
For Ricci this is “an encouraging sign: a part of politics has understood that the DRS is an effective measure, already adopted in 18 European countries, which costs the State nothing and which also reduces the plastic tax that we pay every year for non-recycled bottles”.
However, Ricci recalls that “separate waste collection is a necessary step, but that without an ecosystem that includes, among other elements, a circular design aimed at reuse or recycling, effective return logistics for goods and packaging, waste prevention and truly applied extended producer responsibility, it is not possible to create a stable market for recycling”.
In other words, security deposit is an essential part of the solution, but it requires a broader system to ensure supply chain stability.
