Displayed with permission of Plastic News, Copyright Crain Communications, Inc.
Originally published in PlasticsNews.comChina on February 13, 2007.

By Katherine Peavy
PLASTICS NEWS CORRESPONDENT

GUANGZHOU, GUANGDONG (February 13, 2007) -- Recyclers in China are watching new regulations on hazardous substances and electronic waste.

The rules are similar to Europe’s Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive (WEEE). Like their counterparts in Europe, recyclers in China are preparing for changes, and some expect the rules to be challenging.

Darren Arola, global director of product development and sales for MBA Polymers Inc., said the WEEEtype legislation could be a boon for recycling.

“Legislation can help develop the collection infrastructure for electrical and electronic equipment recycling, thereby creating the supply of commodities such as plastics, metal and glass for downstream recyclers such as MBA,” Arola said.

MBA, which is based in Richmond, California, has an engineering plastics recycling plant in Guangzhou.

Dealing with the RoHS legislation, however, could make the work a challenge.

“RoHS does impact our practices and the plastics that we target in the raw material streams available to us from WEEE for our customers, since we need to make sure that they can meet RoHS standards, but China RoHS will not facilitate collection of material in my opinion,” Arola said. “RoHS acts to restrict the use of plastics with certain additives and elements, which can make it challenging for us, especially if they adopt extremely low standards beyond RoHS.”

Arola says MBA’s customers in the United States, Asia and Europe are all limiting materials with flameretardant heavy metals to comply with the RoHS and WEEE directives.

Europe’s RoHS legislation has been in effect since mid-2006. China’s regulations took effect January 1, but will be implemented in stages. The government requires testing of compounds beginning March 1, and end-users must label products beginning January 1, 2008.

However, the catalog of restricted products and substances will not come out until 2008, causing confusion for some companies.

For some of China’s recyclers, the new regulations could threaten their business. The majority of China’s waste plastic processors still sort product manually and identify flame retardants via burn and sniff tests, rather than technical testing.

He Weiqi, the owner of Xinxing Viber Plastic Factory in Shunde, near Guangzhou, said he is not clear about the regulations, but the environmental protection bureau has come down hard on companies like his since the beginning of the year.

Viber has not been using its waste material cleansing vats since late 2006. The company has shifted to supplying materials for packaging uses, like film, rather than the more difficult to process ABS or high density polyethylene.

Supplying customers with high standard plastics was not such a leap for MBA’s Guangzhou joint venture facility Guangzhou GISE-MBA New Plastics Technology Co., or GMP, because the company already uses high-tech testing equipment and mechanized sorting and processing systems when producing recycled ABS and high-impact PS compounds.

For injection molder and contract manufacturer Nypro Co., the regulations have raised costs. The company invested in testing equipment and adjusted some internal operations processes to satisfy RoHS requirements, said Stronger Su, general manager of Nypro’s Suzhou facility.

“Some customers ask for 11 items [rather than the seven required by RoHS] to be tested, so [Nypro is] stricter than the international standard,” Su said. The company’s parent is based in Clinton, Massachusetts.

Arola said China offers opportunity for engineering plastics recyclers that have a strong technical background.

“China is great because there is a big opportunity for selling plastics into a host of applications,” he said. Arola welcomes the new regulations, as long as there are reasonable allowances for additives and elements that are prevalent in the plastic raw material provided for recycling.

Entire contents copyright 2007 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

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