A $1.5 million loan from the Closed Loop Fund enabled construction of a high-tech materials recovery facility in an area of the country that has been sorely lacking in processing capacity. The company receiving the funding is also notable for its "pure-play" recycling model. Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) on March 16 held a grand-opening celebration for the 40,000-square-foot facility, called...

Curbside recycling will likely continue uninterrupted in America's fourth-largest city, but it comes at the expense of glass recovery. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and a Waste Management (WM) official announced on Friday, March 11 they had reached a deal on a two-year contract. The future of curbside collection for more than 380,000 households was thrown into question when the Houston...

The immediate future of Houston's curbside recycling program is uncertain after city leaders rejected a proposed contract renewal with Waste Management. The fourth-largest city in America currently contracts with Waste Management (WM) to accept recyclable materials delivered by city trucks to two WM MRFs. Every two weeks, trucks collect single-stream materials from more than 380,000 single-family homes. That pact is...

Hundreds of thousands of Texans could lose curbside recycling service if the Houston City Council rejects a new contract with Waste Management. The City Council on Wednesday will consider approving a new contract with the nation's largest hauler and materials recovery facility operator, which is headquartered in the city. The new contract requires Texas' largest city to spend millions of...

Dow Chemical Co. says its new compatibilizer allows reclaimers to get improved properties from PE-PP mixes, making it possible to move the material into higher-value applications. And, in a separate innovation, plastics manufacturer Indorama Ventures has created a stronger virgin PET for blow molding, allowing packaging companies to use it instead of a recycling-unfriendly PETG to make certain types of...

Without using heat or pressure, a small commercial-sized facility in Quebec is breaking down post-consumer PET into its component monomers so they can be recycled into new PET. The recycling method employed by Loop Industries, which received a U.S. patent in January, is "definitely a game-changing technology in this industry," Daniel Solomita, company founder, president and CEO, told Plastics Recycling...

New York's e-scrap collections were down about 3 percent in 2014, while Wisconsin saw an 18 percent drop. At the same time, multiple state environment departments have recommended changes to their extended producer responsibility laws for electronics recycling. Those updates and others emerged from reports on e-scrap programs in four states: New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.New York The Empire...

An artificially intelligent optical sortation device has started sorting some of the millions of pounds of batteries collected across the U.S. by stewardship group Call2Recycle. Atlanta-based Call2Recycle signed a three-year contract with Battery Solutions for battery sortation. Battery Solutions says it's the only operation in North America using automated sorting technology to separate batteries by chemistry so they can be...

A decade ago, polypropylene reclaimer KW Plastics explored reducing the amount it paid for bales to account for the contamination found in them. "I was told 'you can try that but it will never work,' or 'you're crazy' or 'who do you think you are?'" recalls Stephanie Baker, director of market development at KW Plastics Recycling Division. The yield-based payment...

The Association of Plastic Recyclers spotlighted five recycled-product innovations and one educational effort at the group's first Plastic Recycling Showcase this week. The event was part of the APR Technical Forum on Feb. 1, held in conjunction with Plastics Recycling 2016 in New Orleans. "Creating new products is hard work, and achieving a first sale for a new product is...