The EU’s 27 member states are again exporting more waste plastic to countries outside the European Union. After shipments from the bloc to third countries hit a 20-year low in 2022, exports rebounded in 2023 and that trend has continued into the first half of the current year, according to recently published data from Eurostat. EU exports of waste plastic to third countries totalled 739,000 tonnes between January and June 2024. This was 16 per cent more than in the same period last year, according to the figures from the European statistical office. The amount of “waste, parings and scrap of plastic” imported into the EU from third countries also grew slightly.
The most significant increases appearing in the Eurostat data were in shipments to the Far East and Turkey. EU-27 exports to Malaysia, for example, rose by more than a third.
