Corepla warns Italy's plastic recycling chain risks paralysis as 45 European plants close

Corepla, Italy's national consortium for the collection, recycling and recovery of plastic packaging, has warned that separate collection of plastic packaging risks slowing down and, in the worst case, halting altogether. The alert, reported by reggionline.com and relayed by Confindustria Reggio Emilia, describes a chain in which collected volumes keep rising while the economics of recycling deteriorate.

The immediate symptom is inventory. Secondary raw material that finds no buyer stays where it was produced, so bales and granulate accumulate in sorting and storage centres, and that backlog pushes pressure back up the chain towards municipal collection. The situation bears directly on Reggio Emilia and the wider Emilia-Romagna region, where plastics conversion and circular-economy activity carry industrial weight.

Capacity is leaving the system

In recent months 45 recycling plants have closed across Europe, according to figures cited by Confindustria Reggio Emilia. In Italy, two plants have already suspended operations and two more are heading into modernisation works, further reducing treatment capacity while the interventions are carried out.

Gianluca Melli, president of the Rubber and Plastic Materials Group at Confindustria Reggio Emilia, said regenerated plastic “struggles to find a market, because it is squeezed by energy and industrial costs and by competition from virgin or recycled polymers coming from non-EU countries, often offered at lower prices and produced to standards not equivalent to European ones.” He added that companies in the Reggio Emilia area that have invested in innovation, energy efficiency, more recyclable packaging and the use of regenerated materials now risk seeing those investments compromised.

Virgin resin still wins on price

Corepla and AiCS have flagged the same underlying paradox: producing virgin plastic today often costs less than recycling used material, which turns secondary raw material into a premium that many companies avoid. Andrea Nesi of AiCS argued that without compensation and market correctives — incentives, tax relief or preferential public purchasing — virgin plastic will continue to win and recycling will remain a permanently loss-making activity.

Costs on the packaging side are moving the other way. The CONAI environmental contribution for rigid polypropylene packaging in band B2.1 rises to 639 euros per tonne from 1 October 2026, against 350 euros in 2023 — close to double in three years. Melli said the increase responds to the need to finance a system in difficulty, but cannot translate into a further burden carried by manufacturers alone.

Collected is not the same as recycled

Volumes reaching the bin do not automatically return to the market as new material. According to analysis by Plastic Free Onlus cited by nove.firenze.it, roughly half of the plastic placed on the market escapes actual recovery. Luca De Gaetano, president of Plastic Free Onlus, said that “of the total plastic packaging placed on the market, barely half is actually recycled,” and that correct disposal does not guarantee the material returns as new raw material. Multi-polymer packaging and low-value plastic fractions make treatment economically unsustainable.

Stalled offtake has physical consequences. nove.firenze.it links overfull stores of flammable material and record temperatures to a run of five fires in two months in Tuscany during the summer of 2026, at Capannori, Vicopisano, Empoli, Livorno and Vecchiano. The same report points to the value locked in adjacent waste streams: the Ecolight consortium calculates that more than 830 kg of secondary raw materials can be recovered from every tonne of small waste electrical and electronic equipment.

What the sector is asking for

Plastics companies are asking to move quickly from emergency management to an industrial policy for recycling, built around four measures:

• reducing the weight of energy costs;
• introducing tax credits and incentives for the use of recycled plastic;
• full application of the Minimum Environmental Criteria in public procurement;
• stronger controls on imported materials to guarantee fair competitive conditions.

The sector is also calling for urgent talks between the Government, the Regions, European institutions, CONAI, Corepla and business representatives to identify concrete solutions. Melli framed the stakes in terms of competitiveness: the plastics chain generates qualified employment, innovation and added value, and defending it means protecting the resilience of the circular economy and the country's environmental targets.