During his weekend programme, Deputy Prime Minister Karel Havlíček gave a greeting to the participants of the webinars GREEN DEAL - a threat or an opportunity? The toast will kick off the first webinar on 15 June 2021 and will be followed by contributions from representatives of the MIT (Deputy Minister Silvana Jirotková), the Ministry of the Environment (Minister Richard Brabec), the Confederation of Industry and Transport (Vice President Radek Špicar) and industry representatives (Jaroslav Rokos from Sokolovská uhelná).
The webinars are held under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of the Environment.
The products of the recycling industry need to be better marketed, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček, when he and other representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade visited the SUEZ CZ recycling plant in Němčice nad Hanou on Saturday 29 May and met with representatives of the Czech Association of Circular Economy (ČAObH). SUEZ has been producing high-quality regranulate from LDPE waste films in Němčice for the fifth year in a quantity of 4,500 tonnes per year. Initially only industrial waste is supplemented by an increasing proportion of municipal plastic waste in cooperation with EKO-KOM. This puts demands on the operators and the technology, and yet here the technology team led by Jan Šimánek achieves high quality regranulate. The sales team then handles sales to plastic film manufacturers. These are mostly located abroad, and local producers are not yet so interested in recycled raw material, even if it is of high quality. "The vast majority of our regranulate, about 80 percent, goes abroad. For example, to countries that have already created conditions to support sales from recycling. And this is de facto what we lack the most, that is, to support and develop the market for recycled products and to support sales," said Petr Špičák, technical director of SUEZ CZ and a leading expert of the ČAObH on the circular economy.
Karel Havlicek spent almost two hours in the operation and in discussions with representatives of the ČAObH. He was interested in the technical and operational economic context of recycling. When asked what exactly the recycling industry needs for its development, he received a clear answer: above all, stable and motivating support for the sale of recycled raw materials. On the same day, the Deputy Prime Minister told the media that CZK 3.5 billion from the National Recovery Plan would go to support recycling and said that there was also a need to get recycled products into circulation better. "We have a lot of catching up to do here. It's about changing legislation. We need to push more for the industry to use products that are recycled at a certain percentage," the minister told reporters present. He said marketing and incentives, especially tax instruments, also play a significant role in this regard.
