EuPR: Annual General Assembly 2005 - Elections 2006-2008

EuPR, the European Plastics Recyclers Association (www.eupr.org), held its Annual General Assembly on 2 December 2005 in Brussels. During this meeting, elections were held for the new Management Committee. The following people were (re-)elected to the Management Committee the 2006-2008 period: Mr Bernard Merkx as President, Mr Casper Van den Dungen and Mr Silvio Löderbusch as Vice-Presidents and Mr Helmut Ogulin as Treasurer.

In addition, Mr Peter Bay, Mr Hans-Jürgen Berenbruch, Mr Mark Burstall, Mr José Losada and Mr Stefan Nimz were elected as members of the EuPR Management Committee.

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EuPR members expressed a special thanks to the departing members of the Management Committee, Mr Pietro Majorana and Mr Anders Hillertz, for their efforts and input.

EuPR President Bernard Merkx pointed out that the challenges the plastic recycling industry are facing are very important: “Our recycling business in Europe needs regulations on waste to safeguard material flows on input streams for mechanical treatment and sorting of plastics fractions. Converters are also finding more and more applications to consume post-consumer mixed plastics fractions and our members are facing shortage of good quality input streams. Member States should therefore put more focus on supporting the installation of sorting plants”. Due to the recent developments in the revision of the EU Waste Framework directive and strong lobby from different stakeholders, however, some Member States seem to support energy from waste solutions (which require other sorting methods) rather than focussing first on mechanical recycling. This attitude could have a serious impact on the further development of the activities and future investments of the mechanical recyclers in
Europe.

The “REACH” regulation in its current draft form has catastrophic consequences for plastics recyclers in Europe. “In the original draft of around 3000 pages the word ‘recycling’ can nowhere be found”. EuPR has therefore listed several amendments because a consequence of the current draft could be that the European Union will have to export all its post-consumer plastic waste to Asia, as mechanical recycling will no longer be possible in Europe from an economic perspective. “Certainly something politicians should bear in mind when voting on the EuPR proposal amendments”.

There are therefore more than enough reasons for EuPR to continue fighting to defend the interests of a young industry that is developing at a fast pace and which has been serving the plastics business in an environmental friendly, efficient and economic way for more than 20 years.

EuPR will celebrate it‘s 10 anniversary in 2006 and will organise a special congress on the 27-28th of September 2006 in Cyprus.

European Plastics Recyclers, Brussels, Belgium

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