Il rifiuto è una risorsa – waste is a resource. I have repeated this sentence for years, and I still believe it is the most important idea in our industry. A plastic bottle, a crate or a piece of film does not stop having value when it is thrown away. It only stops having value when we treat it as rubbish.
The material is still there
Every tonne of plastic waste is a tonne of polymer that has already been produced. The energy and raw materials are already spent. If it is collected, sorted and recycled well, it can go back into new products – packaging, pipes, car parts, furniture. If it ends up in landfill or in the environment, all of that value is lost, and we pay a second time to manage the damage.
Why the market alone is not enough
After more than forty years in the plastics market I know how decisions are made: on price, quality and reliability of supply. Recycled materials can compete on all three, but not always and not everywhere. When virgin polymer prices fall, recycled material is often the first to suffer, even though it is the better choice for everyone in the long run.
That is why we need new laws and clearer rules: consistent collection and sorting systems, quality standards that buyers can trust, and incentives that reward companies for using recycled content instead of penalising them for it.
What each of us can do
- Producers and brands can design products that are easy to recycle and commit to using recycled material.
- Recyclers and traders can build long-term partnerships instead of one-off deals.
- Policy makers can set rules that are stable enough for companies to invest in.
- All of us can sort our waste properly – the first step of every recycling chain.
Waste is a resource. The sooner we organise our economy around that fact, the better for our companies, our cities and our planet.