The Republic Services Anaheim Recycling Facility is a 35-acre site handling a wide variety of materials, including single-stream residential recyclables, commercial and multi-family mixed waste, organics, construction and demolition debris, white goods, and scrap electronics. But it didn’t get that large overnight. Instead, expansions to the sprawling complex came incrementally over the past quarter-century. The latest upgrade doubled the capacity...

Veolia has opened an operation in Ontario to recycle lamps and mercury-bearing electronic components. The 5,000-square-foot facility is located in the Toronto-area city of Pickering, Ontario, where Veolia already runs an industrial cleaning and hazardous materials management operation, according to a press release. The focus will be on recycling lamps, but the facility is also capable of recycling electronics and...

Construction is underway on a massive Los Angeles-area plastics recycling facility that will take PET bales all the way to bottle preforms, extruded sheet and thermoform packaging. The 302,000-square-foot facility in Vernon, Calif. is being built for a new company, rPlanet Earth. Taking in baled post-consumer PET, including material from curbside collections, the plant will sort, wash, decontaminate and convert...

A technologically advanced plastics processor has opened in Canada as a successor to the failed reclaimer Entropex. Sarnia, Ontario-based ReVital Polymers has equipment to separate and process plastics into recycled plastics tailored to high-end applications, including food and drink containers, household products and auto parts, according to a press release. It's the first facility in Canada to combine container sorting...

The Association of Plastic Recyclers has launched a program aimed at increasing demand for post-consumer polyethylene and polypropylene by having companies commit to using recycled content in pallets and other internal items. APR announced the Recycling Demand Champion Campaign last week, which involved a number of major companies pledging to use recycled PE and PP products. Those businesses include Berry...

A federal grand jury has indicted a Wisconsin man on charges he fraudulently obtained millions of dollars for his planned recycling business. Ronald Van Den Heuvel, 62, of De Pere, Wis. is being charged with wire fraud and money laundering, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. In addition, the U.S....

Samsung withdrew an environmental friendliness claim for a TV model after the manufacturer failed to prove its device met recyclability and reusability standards. The global electronics company had one of its flat-screen TV models audited to determine whether it was conforming to standards that allow it to be listed as an EPEAT device. Listing on the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment...

P&G, Coca-Cola and a handful of other major companies have committed to using products containing post-consumer resin in a range of storage and shipping applications, as part of a new program from the Association of Plastic Recyclers. Announced Oct. 18, the APR Recycling Demand Champion Campaign asks companies to commit to using recycled-content plastic pallets, crates, tote boxes, cans and...

Anti-incineration activists are criticizing an industry program that diverts traditionally non-recycled plastics away from landfill and into energy-recovery facilities. In response, project backer Dow Chemical Co. has defended the program's utility. Using orange bags left at the curb, the Hefty EnergyBag program collects a range of plastic items, including multilayer bags and films, foam polystyrene goods and other packaging. The...

A movie studio that paid $1,500 to purchase a chair will often want it gone as soon as the shoot is finished. The L.A. Shares program in America's second-largest city works to ensure the chair is donated instead of sent into the waste stream. “A lot of these items are Porsche quality because we work a lot with the studios,...