Michael Brunn

According to Zero Waste Europe, with yesterday's vote on the Renewable Energy proposal, the ENVI Committee took an important step to realign renewable energy policy with the EU waste legislation, and reconfirmed its commitment to achieve ambitious circular economy targets.

There were a total of 227 ships broken in the third quarter of 2017. Of these, 124 ships ended up on beaches in South Asia for dirty and dangerous breaking [1]. Between July and September, one worker lost his life at a shipbreaking yard in Alang, India. Another worker was reported seriously injured in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

The BIR E-Scrap Committee's meta study of reliable generation and flow data is already in draft form and will be published in the coming months, said E-Scrap Committee Chairman Thomas Papageorgiou of Greece-based Anamet SA at the latest gathering in New Delhi.

BIR's International Environment Council (IEC) meeting in New Delhi was devoted almost entirely to the issue that is preoccupying great swathes of the recycling industry: China's import ban affecting certain secondary raw materials.

World crude steel production for the 66 countries reporting to the World Steel Association (worldsteel) was 141.4 million tonnes (Mt) in September 2017, a 5.6% increase compared to September 2016.

Hitachi Zosen Inova is to build a new Kompogas plant in collaboration with its Italian partner Cesaro Mac Import, this already being the fifth such facility in Italy.

China's proposed import restrictions on lower grades of recovered fibre will require major investments by suppliers in quality control processes and technology, according to Andreas Uriel.

India's demand for secondary aluminium will increase by 8-10% per year, mainly boosted by the country's rapidly-growing automotive industry, according to Akshay Agarwal.

India's textiles recycling sector employs more than one million people and, each year, turns over around US$ 2 billion in processing some 5 million tonnes of material

India ranks as the world's number one importer and consumer of stainless steel scrap not only because of the amount of stainless steel produced in India (it is second only to China) but also because of the very high proportion of scrap to primary use in its production mix, it was underlined at the latest meeting of the BIR Stainless Steel & Special Alloys Committee.