Page 64 - Plastics News December 2016

INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Bag litter numbers fall at UK beaches
The now United Kingdom-wide charge for single use
plastic retail bags has had a significant impact on
the amount being carelessly thrown away by consumers,
according to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). In
its latest Great British Beach Clean report, the MCS said
the number of plastic bags found across 364 beaches
around the U.K. — which had been "swept" by nearly
6,000 volunteers
over one weekend
in September —
had fallen by 40
percent in a year.
The northwest of
England saw the
greatest reduction
in bags found
along 100-meter-
long stretches of
coastline, down 67
percent, while the southwest witnessed a 63 percent
fall. In the southeast the figure was 51 percent lower
than last year. In Scotland, where a 5-pence charge
has been in place since 2014, the decline was smaller,
at 10 percent, while Wales, which introduced a charge
five years ago, saw littered bags down by a third. MCS
Beachwatch Manager Lauren Eyles, said the charge had
been vindicated in terms of lessening the impact of bags
on the country’s beaches: “In the last decade, our Great
British Beach Clean volunteers have found an average
of 10 single use carrier bags for every 100 meters of
coastline cleaned. “This year, for the first time since
the charges were introduced, we’ve seen a significant
drop in the number and that can only be as a result of
the charge which is now in place in all the home nations.
“It vindicates the charge, which we predicted would be
good news for the marine environment. Thanks to our
thousands of fantastic volunteers who collect beach litter
data, we can now see the impact these charges have
had.” However Eyles said the figure of 268,384 individual
pieces of plastic picked up by MCS beach cleaners was a
“disaster,” despite the amount being less than last year’s
tidy-up operation. Analysis from the MCS said that 43
percent of the litter found on U.K. beaches was too small
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to identify, and it was impossible to accurately predict
where it had come from. While the figure of an average
of 649 littered items collected per 100 meters was a 4
percent decrease on last year, data collected by Great
British Beach Clean volunteers also showed a rise of more
than 4 percent in the quantity of drinks containers found —
including plastic bottles, bottle tops and aluminum cans.
China raises subsidy on
plastics machinery exports
The Chinese government have started paying
equipment manufacturers a 17 percent subsidy
on plastic
machinery
exports in
the form of
“tax refund”
effective
November
1. The policy
change is
expected to
support exports
of injection molding, extrusion, blow molding and
other types of plastics processing machinery. The
refund rate has fluctuated in the past decade,
starting at 17 percent, then dropping to 15 percent,
then 14 percent, back to 15 percent, and now back
to 17 percent. China’s exports of plastic machinery
increased 4.9 percent to $1.5 billion in the first nine
months of 2016, according to data from China’s
customs department. During the same period, imports
dropped 14.8 percent to $1 billion. China’s trade
surplus of plastic machinery during the first three
quarters stands at $423.95 million. China’s imports
of injection molding presses dipped by 19.8 percent,
by value, while exports rose to 1.8 percent. Extrusion
equipment imports shrank by 12.7 percent, while
exports rose 7.2 percent. Blow molding machinery
imports dropped by 26.9 percent, while exports rose
10.2 percent.