The Eurostat has recently published the data on waste and recyclable materials exports between 2016 and 2019, showing a new but not necessarily better geographical scenario in terms of environmental impact. With China banning on trade in four classes and 24 types of solid waste in 2017, it became necessary to physically change the direction of these exports, moving paper and plastic waste to other countries, in particular Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Asian countries. There were 1.4 million tonnes of plastic waste that the European Union exported to China before the closure, then fell to 50 thousand tonnes in 2018 and 14 thousand tonnes in 2019. Subsequently, plastic waste from the EU was diverted to the three countries quoted above (in Malaysia 24% of exports, in Turkey 17%, in Indonesia 6%).

The paper instead has undergone a gradual change of direction and size: if in 2016 in China we exported 7.4 million tons of waste as EU, today the number is about 5.9 million, while other countries chosen to receive our paper were mainly India (19%), Indonesia (17%), Turkey (12%) and Thailand (10%).

Eurostat data, however, do not explain how many materials were also stuck in Italy or Europe for lack of real management: there is therefore an unspecified number of submerged waste, perhaps stuck in the plants, abandoned or simply disposed of in ways not properly legal. A problem that highlights a real crisis with regard to our number of plants sufficient to dispose of the enormous amount of recyclable (and not) waste and that makes us dependent on countries especially in South-East Asia, worsening with considerable economic and environmental costs. A problem exacerbated in the first months of 2020, where due to the pandemic closure of some activities in the countries where we export the most, the waste remained at a standstill, saturating the plants in a short time.