Over the last year, global facility operator FCC was determined to win a bid to sort Houston's recyclables, and in the end it sweetened its offer to ensure it would be chosen. A company leader recently explained the details behind FCC's strategy. The Houston City Council on Jan. 10 approved awarding the 15-year contract (with the possibility for one five-year...

Two brand owners recently made pledges to boost recycled content and improve the recyclability of their packaging. French food and beverage giant Danone announced that its evian brand of bottled water will use 100 percent recycled content PET bottles by 2025. The brand's bottles are currently made with an average of 25 percent recycled content, according to a press release....

E-scrap collections in Washington state have been decreasing for the past four years, both in terms of total and per-capita weights. New data released by the Washington Department of Ecology shows the E-Cycle Washington program collected 30.9 million pounds of TVs, computers and monitors in 2017, down more than 16 percent year over year. Weights collected have been falling since...

Basel Action Network, which has been using GPS trackers to follow used electronics, today named six companies it says were involved in shipping scrap printers and LCD monitors to Asia. The Seattle-based advocacy group today released an update to its "e-Trash Transparency Project," which plants tracking devices in scrap electronics, drops them off for recycling and reports on where they're...

Dell has recycled e-plastics from end-of-life devices back into new electronics for years. Now, the global technology company is doing the same thing for gold. Dell announced it has established an industry-first closed-loop supply chain for the precious metal. It is working on the pilot project with Wistron GreenTech, which processes and recovers the gold. Wistron also works with Dell...

Photo credit: WEEE Ireland If electronics recycling is akin to mining, a recently released data tool provides a sort of geological map for e-scrap companies to follow. Partners in the European Union-funded ProSUM (Prospecting Secondary Raw Materials in the Urban Mine and Mining Wastes) project on Jan. 17 released their final report and online data tool. The tool provides a...

The U.S. EPA recently recognized an easier-to-recycle flat-screen TV, an outreach and collection program, and a phone reuse project. The EPA gave out its annual Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Electronics Challenge awards during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week. The awards give props to OEMs and retailers for designing environmentally friendly devices and working to...

The world's largest restaurant operator will increase access to recycling at its food establishments and make packaging changes to lessen environmental impacts. McDonald's on Jan. 16 announced a goal of providing front-of-house recycling service at all its restaurants by 2025. More than 37,000 McDonald's locations are operating in 100-plus countries, and the vast majority - more than 90 percent -...

With a new strategy to tackle plastics, the European Commission says it has the recycling industry's back. The commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union, on Jan. 16 announced the first-ever pan-European strategy on plastics. The commission laid out a broad strategy, but implementing it will take additional steps over the coming couple of years. Parts of...

Six East Coast states experienced seven waste and recycling deaths in only the first week and a half of 2018, according to an industry group. The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) said the fatalities occurred in Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Six of them involved collectors. "I am very disappointed by the number of...