After the Austrian government promised support for the faltering domestic recycling industry, Altstoff Recycling Austria (ARA, Vienna; www.ara.at) is now calling for concrete steps – a bundle of measures worth around EUR 70m will be used to ensure that collection, sorting and recycling continue and for inventories of secondary raw materials that cannot currently be sold. According to ARA board member Christoph Scharff, the guidelines for direct grants in the context of Covid-19 aid measures must also be modified.

In view of the pandemic’s economic impact, ARA warns of long-term structural damage to the recycling industry. Austria has already met the targets of the EU’s circular economy package for 2025 for paper, glass and metal packaging (see Plasteurope.com of 10.01.2020) – “Plastics, however, remain the great challenge,” ARA board member Werner Knausz emphasises.

In order to achieve the quota of 50% of all plastic packaging required by the EU for 2025, the recycling quantities of currently 75,000 t would have to be doubled in the next four years. To achieve this, according to the association, it is necessary to increase the capacities for collection, sorting and recycling in the household and commercial sectors by 40% each.

However, the presently difficult situation in the plastics recycling industry (see Plasteurope.com of 20.05.2020), means that 75% of the plants in Austria are not operating due to the crisis. “We need rapid, efficient and sustainable support now so that the recycling industry only loses a few months but does not fall behind by years,” said Knausz.

Last year, Austria’s leading collection system for packaging collected almost 1.1m t of household packaging and scrap paper, which represents a 0.6% increase compared to 2018. The quantity of collected plastic and light packaging rose 1% to 177,200 t. Collection of waste glass increased by 3.5% to 245,000 t and metal packaging rose 2.7% to 30,000 t.