April 30, 2025 16:44

Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE), in collaboration with ICIS, has released a new report — HDPE & PP Market in Europe: State of Play 2023 — on the state of rigid polyolefin recycling in Europe, covering polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for the EU 27+3 region.

According to the study, installed recycling capacity in 2023 stood at 1.7 million tonnes for HDPE and 1.8 million tonnes for PP, across approximately 300 recycling facilities — a figure that shows no increase compared to the previous year.
The reasons behind this stagnation, explains PRE, include weaker demand amid a global polyolefin oversupply, as well as high inflation, high energy costs, and competition from lower-cost imports of both virgin and recycled polymers.

Collection of rigid polyolefin waste has also shown little progress. While most EU countries have now implemented separate collection schemes, the collection rate did not improve significantly between 2018 and 2023. Moreover, only 42% of collected waste was actually sorted in a way that made it suitable for recycling.
The gap between collection and recyclability can be attributed to several factors, including incompatibilities with design-for-recycling principles, exports, and sorting limitations.

To meet the recycled content targets set by the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), an additional 2 million tonnes of recycling capacity for HDPE and PP will be needed by 2030, with a further 5.7 million tonnes required by 2040, PRE warns.

“The current market conditions — and recycling capacity estimates for 2024 — raise significant concerns whether these targets can be met without decisive political intervention,” the report states.

According to PRE, reversing the trend and supporting recycling growth in the EU will require urgent action, including the establishment of fair market conditions through stricter oversight of imported materials; the adoption of mandatory design-for-recycling guidelines; a substantial increase in collection rates; and deployment of advanced sorting technologies.

These steps, the association argues, are essential to ensuring long-term investment, boosting recycling performance, and keeping Europe on track with its circular economy goals.

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