Site stability uncertainties are complicating a MRF construction project in Charleston County, S.C. The Post and Courier newspaper reports the county's construction of a $24 million facility has been delayed by six months. The holdup is due to concerns about stability of the site, which is located on the grounds of a former asphalt factory between two landfills. Before Charleston...

Sims Recycling Solutions' consolidation of U.S. e-scrap shredding operations yielded financial benefits and more clearly drew a line between its shredding and reuse activities. That was one takeaway from a recently released annual report. Part of publicly traded global scrap metals company Sims Metal Management, Sims Recycling Solutions (SRS) processed about 447,000 metric tons of used electronics and electrical appliances...

Stakeholders have come to settlements in lawsuits over an explosion caused by batteries from used electronics in North Carolina. In July 2016, a four-alarm fire at a Wilson Trucking shipping center in Charlotte, N.C. sent six employees to the hospital and caused substantial damage. Wilson Trucking said in court papers it was caused by batteries that ignited, because they had...

Are Apple's new iPhones environmentally friendly? It depends on which rating system you ask. Device repair hub iFixit recently conducted teardowns of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus to judge how easily they could be repaired. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being easiest to repair, it gave them each a 6, one point lower than...

Three groups on two continents will work to create one harmonized process for testing the recyclability of plastic products. The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) and the European PET Bottle Platform (EPBP) announced they have formed the Global Plastics Outreach Alliance. Their goal is to make it easier for brand owners and packaging producers to test their...

After producing 150,000 shampoo bottles made partially with recovered marine plastics, Procter & Gamble will now do the same thing with 320,000 dish soap containers. The consumer goods company announced it will work with TerraCycle to incorporate recovered beach plastics into bottles in the U.K. The containers, which will hold Fairy brand dish soap, will be made of 10 percent...

In Toronto, as in other cities, multi-family residential recycling rates have been stubbornly lower than their single-family counterparts. As Canada's largest city works to boost recycling rates, a local MRF operator is experimenting with recovering recyclables from multi-family garbage streams. Two presentations at last month's WasteCon 2017 event in Baltimore touched on the recycling environment in Toronto. Jim McKay, general...

MRF company ReCommunity and Ann Arbor, Mich. have agreed to settle their legal dispute without an award of money to either party. For more than two decades, North Carolina-based ReCommunity operated a city-owned MRF. But last year city government terminated their contract and kicked ReCommunity staff off the property, citing continuing unsafe conditions, including multiple fires that broke out. ReCommunity...

Major brands, nonprofit organizations and industry groups will raise $150 million to boost the collection and recycling of plastics that may otherwise become marine debris. Announced Oct. 4, the new initiative will raise money to fund waste management and recycling solutions in Southeast Asia, a region that contributes greatly to the global ocean plastics problem. Supporting the effort are the...

Major brands, nonprofit organizations and industry groups will raise $150 million to boost the collection and recycling of plastics that may otherwise become marine debris. Announced today, the new initiative will raise money to fund waste management and recycling solutions in Southeast Asia, a region that contributes greatly to the global ocean plastics problem. Supporting the effort are the Ocean...