By challenging the economic and environmental value of recycling, New York Times science columnist John Tierney has poked the recycling stakeholders hornet's nest. Again. Among the dozens of groups and companies that have spoken up about a recent story questioning the value of expanding materials recovery are the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC)....

The renamed Plastics-to-Fuel and Petrochemistry Alliance (PFPA) has added a new member to the growing group. Formerly the Plastics-to-Oil Technologies Alliance, the PFPA moved to change its name to reflect the fact that the group's members produced a variety of different end products, rather than just oil. "The name change broadens the channel," said Michael Dungan, chairman of the PFPA...

The much-discussed mixed-waste materials recovery facility in Montgomery, Ala. has closed its doors. The closure of the Infinitus Renewable Energy Park at Montgomery (IREP Montgomery), first reported by a local TV station in Montgomery, was confirmed in an email sent to Resource Recycling by Montgomery's director of public works, Chris Conway. According to Conway, the city has been asked to...

The National Recycling Coalition held its board of directors' election at the Resource Recycling Conference, leading to the election of nine members. Picking between 13 candidates, members of the NRC voted in the following members to serve as board of directors for the national group. Stephen Bantillo, Executive Director, Recycling Certification Institute Robert J. Bylone, Jr., Executive Director and President,...

The California Product Stewardship Council has helped form a new group to advocate for extended producer responsibility laws around the country. The National Stewardship Action Council was created to push the U.S. in the direction of a circular economy, according to an announcement from the California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC). "With extended producer responsibility (EPR) beginning to take hold on...

An electronics recycling firm has been sued by Microsoft for allowing more than 70,000 Microsoft Office key cards to be re-sold on the black market.In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in a Seattle district court, Microsoft accuses Global Electronic Recycling (GER), a Phoenix processor, of breaching the terms of a 2009 contract that explicitly called for the valuable activation...

How successful are existing sortation systems at separating flexible packaging? New research aims to answer that question. A number of major packaging stakeholders and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) are launching a project called Materials Recovery for the Future. The effort centers on a study that will explore whether existing sortation technologies, including screens and optical scanners, can reliably handle...

New estimates on the time it takes for a flat-panel display TV to enter the U.K. waste stream have been released.The findings, determined by WRAP, an influential waste reduction and recycling nonprofit group based in the U.K., suggest the average life span of flat-panel display televisions is about 10 years. Life-span estimates are critical in estimating when devices will begin appearing...

How successful are existing sortation systems at separating flexible packaging? New research aims to answer that question. A number of major packaging stakeholders and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) are launching a project called Materials Recovery for the Future. The effort centers on a study that will explore whether existing sortation technologies, including screens and optical scanners, can reliably handle...

Recycling of PET containers continues to increase across Europe, according to a recent report. The trade group Petcore Europe estimates 57 percent of PET containers were recycled in 2014. That's 1.3 percentage points above 2013's Europe-wide recovery rate. It's also nearly double the U.S. recovery rate for PET containers in 2013, which was just above 31 percent. All told, 66...