Following an audit carried out by ENAC at the AIMPLAS laboratories, Aimplas is now officially also accredited to include a series of tests to ensure that exports of plastic waste comply with the Basel Convention. In these tests, Aimplas analyses certain properties of these materials to characterise them before they are inspected by Customs: potential for flammability, corrosivity and reactivity, identification and toxicity, and radioactivity.
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is a multilateral environmental treaty that is supported by 170 countries. Adopted in 1989 it came into force in 1992, and is the most comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous and other wastes. It regulates the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and other wastes and obliges its parties to ensure that such wastes are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.
“Plastic waste must meet a number of requirements described in the Basel Convention before it can be transported across the border from one country to another and the destination country can accept its entry,” said Neus Soriano, the Characterisation Laboratory Leader at AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre.
Convention amendments on plastics designed to reduce exports and imports of plastic waste that may be harmful to human health or the environment when transported from one country to another for a specific use (mechanical recycling, incineration, etc.) came into effect on 1 January 2021.
One amendment, for example, clarified the scope of plastic wastes presumed to be hazardous; another listed a number of types of waste not presumed to be hazardous.
This latter group included a group of cured resins, non-halogenated and fluorinated polymers, provided the waste is destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner and almost free from contamination and other types of wastes; mixtures of plastic wastes consisting of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET) provided they are destined for separate recycling of each material and in an environmentally sound manner, and almost free from contamination and other types of wastes.