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China, Malaysia’s scrap metal U-turn a golden opportunity for India

Reuters . Bengaluru
25 Nov 2021 00:00:00 | Update: 25 Nov 2021 02:05:29
China, Malaysia’s scrap metal U-turn a golden opportunity for India
A man removes copper wiring from electrical cables outside a scrap shop in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, in Mumbai – Reuters Photo

Restrictions on scrap metal imports into China, Malaysia and other countries present a golden opportunity for recyclers in India, an industry official said on Wednesday.

The global scrap and waste-handling industry has been in a state of disruption since 2017 when previous top scrap importer China announced a ban on most plastic, metal and paper scrap imports as part of a pollution crackdown.

Malaysia then emerged as a top destination for the world's metal scrap and plastic waste, but it too recently raised purity thresholds on scrap imports that have left global metal recyclers reeling.

For India's recycling industry, Malaysia's ban represents a "golden chance" to win new business and establish itself as a global leader in scrap processing, said Dhawal Shah, senior vice-president of the Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI).

"We are very frugal-minded here. Anything which has a certain value will be extracted, and it will be recycled," said Shah, who also heads the non-ferrous metals division at the Bureau of International Recycling.

The scrap import restrictions imposed by China and Malaysia were designed to prevent the countries from becoming the dumping grounds for the world's trash.

Shah said India's recycling sector was well positioned to benefit from their step back, as long as government regulations were well thought out, with clear policies in place to ensure scrap is processed in an environmentally friendly way.

"It's not fair to have anybody else's waste dumped into any other country," he said. But, he added, there is a lot of "credible movement of goods, value addition that needs to be done, that can actually help our economy".

He said regulations should not be overly restrictive. "The most vibrant recycling economy is when you have complex materials that can be treated in the right way."

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