Free trade area of recycling material doesn´t increase CO2 because global environmental profits of waste exceed transport related emissions. Also, they guarantee the maximum use of the waste as a new resource and this is basic for the implementation of circular economy. As the conference of the European Commission states in “A Europe that uses efficiently resources”, each year UE removes recycling wastes as paper, glass, plastic, aluminum and steel. If these wastes were recycled, it could save millions of tones of CO2 emissions. They say that towns should manage better their waste because it can avoid a considerable amount of greenhouse effect saving. In the process of recycling, 500.000 jobs will be created. At the same time, recycling waste has become essential with the increasing row material demand in the East and Asia market. In this context, global demand is driving the transformation of the European recycling sector by technology change. They have moved from domestic market to international one. Worldwide crisis have impacted bravely on this sector, that now it is recovering itself. Export to Asia market follows a natural flow. Europe buys goods to Asia, they are packaged so after that, Asia needs to get back packaging. Recycling sector avoids paper consume, because now it is saving 65 millions of paper tones. These types of materials are sent by inverse logistics, that means there are no container that come to China empty. Cargo is by sea because it reduces 65 % the emission volume than by road. Also it is important to consider the saving of CO2 emission that this system avoids because exceed European recycling paper doesn´t go to garbage dump or to incineration. In UK, the Waste and Resource Action Program, that is an independent organism, has a research that finds out the amount of CO2 emissions that comes from transport in the exportation of recycling materials that going to China. The study is set in the real route of commerce with the transport they use to contract. The results say that emissions related to transport in a recycling tone of paper from UK to China, save less than a third part that when the material is recycled. Therefore the contribution of this stage to the global process of recycling is minimum if you compare with the environmental benefits that are gotten in the all process. For further information, please have a look at: http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/CO2_Impact_of_Export_Report_v8_1Aug08.ca 8f0b39.5760.pdf Spain has a rate of recycling paper and cartoon of 73,9%. We should improve the rate with the international rules of market. Source: REPACAR.
