Consumer products giant Unilever has committed to ensuring all of its plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. The company, headquartered in Europe, also pledged investments in technologies to recycle multi-layered packaging. Multi-layered materials, including pouches, are growing in popularity on store shelves but most are not yet recoverable through municipal or return-to-retail recycling programs. "Our plastic...

Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries leaders will consider approving new glass and inbound mixed-recycling specifications. The specs were drafted to increase understanding of the challenges processors face when working with complex municipal streams, ISRI stated in a press release. ISRI's board will consider approving the draft specs at its Feb. 10 winter meeting. The board has the power to adopt,...

A newly opened materials recovery facility is employing a host of sortation technologies to separate curbside materials from households in one of America's largest cities. The FCC Dallas MRF, designed by equipment provider Van Dyk Recycling Solutions, is capable of sorting 30 to 35 tons per hour of single-stream material. It officially opened earlier this month after a two-week testing...

Washington state has never before collected fewer pounds of electronics through its e-scrap program. The Evergreen State's extended producer responsibility program for electronics collected 36.86 million pounds in 2016, the lightest weight collected since the program started in 2009. It was the third year in a row of decreasing weights. The Washington Department of Ecology, which oversees the E-Cycle Washington...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill overhauling the state's e-scrap program. It was identical to legislation he pocket vetoed in 2016. Christie on Jan. 9 signed Senate Bill 981 (S-981), which changes the method the state uses to calculate electronics collection and recycling targets, adds printers and fax machines to the list of covered electronics, allows the state...

The federal government has dramatically lowered permissible exposure limits for beryllium, a metal used in some electronics. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released new limits regarding the amount of beryllium workers can be exposed to. The lower limits could affect e-scrap companies shredding printed circuit boards and other components. Beryllium, often alloyed with copper or aluminum, is...

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued two dozen citations to a Georgia plastics reclaimer, with proposed penalties totaling more than $133,000. OSHA issued citations to Gainesville, Ga.-based Nemo Plastics, a 20-year-old company that reclaims post-industrial plastics, primarily PP and PE. Eric Sidewater, owner of Nemo Plastics, told Plastics Recycling Update the company plans to sit down with OSHA...

California regulators are threatening to bring the hammer down on a carpet stewardship group, saying it has failed for years to grow carpet recycling. The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) says that for the past three years it has warned Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) that its efforts were falling short of legal requirements. It is now...

The federal government will invest up to $70 million in a new research institute focused on reducing recycling costs and boosting recycled content in manufacturing. The U.S. Department of Energy announced the creation of the Reducing Embodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Institute, which will be headquartered in Rochester, N.Y. Its goal will be to develop technologies to reduce energy usage...

Equipment from Dutch company Bollegraaf Recycling Solutions goes fishing at the head of the stream to remove films. The Filmgrabber is able to separate more than 70 percent of film larger than A4 (about the size of a sheet of standard office copier paper) from the single-stream mix, according to a Bollegraaf press release. The machine consists of a rotating...