The Indian government has released rules intended to bolster an organized system of e-scrap processing by gradually increasing collection requirements for manufacturers. On March 23, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Harsh Vardhan, announced amendments to the country's e-scrap management rules, according to a press release. The changes set future collection and recycling targets manufacturers are required to...

LyondellBasell, one of biggest plastic and chemical companies on the planet, has stepped into the plastics recycling sector for the first time. A high-level executive recently explained what drove the decision. The Netherlands-headquartered operation announced earlier this month it has completed a transaction making it a 50-50 partner in plastics recycling company Quality Circular Polymers (QCP). The other partner is...

Packaging and industrial products company Sonoco will acquire a Florida thermoformer that uses high levels of RPET flake in its products. The publicly traded company announced it has signed a deal to buy Highland Packaging Solutions for $150 million in cash. Based in Plant City, Fla., Highland is a privately owned maker of thermoforms for fresh produce and dairy products....

After wounding U.S. exports of scrap paper and plastics, China is now preparing to cripple recovered aluminum shipments. This time, the justification isn't environmental protection but tariff retaliation. China last week said it intends to enact a 25 percent duty on U.S. scrap aluminum. More than half of U.S. scrap aluminum exports land at Chinese ports. China's aluminum move is...

The Closed Loop Fund will loan up to $5 million in Connecticut this year to improve recycling infrastructure. The nonprofit group has partnered with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to identify investment opportunities in the state. Closed Loop Fund provides zero-interest loans to municipalities and below-market loans to businesses. “This is our first formal partnership with...

Novus, which means “new” in Latin, is an appropriate name for this Georgia e-scrap processor. The company was founded only in 2016. Business partners John Flynn and Ronnie Doane launched the operation early last year “with the primary goal of processing and handling all types of electronic equipment in an efficient, economical and environmentally friendly manner,” said Doane, managing director...

A cryptocurrency mining rig (photo courtesy of Filmar Technologies) When Serdar Bankaci went looking for a graphics card recently, he found frustration instead. "I personally was looking for a graphics card for gaming for myself, and I couldn't find anything," he said. Bankaci, president of electronics recycling company CyberCrunch, was experiencing one of the ripple effects of the cryptocurrency mining...

The volume of reported data breach incidents in the U.S. hit a new high last year, with at least some caused by improper disposal of information. According to the 2017 Data Breach Report from the California-based nonprofit group Identity Theft Resource Center, 1,579 breaches were reported last year, up 45 percent year over year. The increased number may have been...

One of the world’s largest footwear manufacturers sold 1 million pairs of shoes last year made partially with recovered marine plastics, and it expects to sell another 5 million this year. Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted told CNBC the company sold a million sneakers that contained components made out of plastics at risk of entering the oceans. The project is a...

The group that runs Oregon’s container deposit program announced it will donate unredeemed deposit money to charitable purposes if the redemption rate for containers drops below 80 percent. The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC) manages almost all containers redeemed through the state’s deposit program. OBRC uses the value of unredeemed containers to help fund the collection and recycling of bottles...