Advocacy organizations are pushing for New York City to adopt a franchise-zoning system for collection of commercial waste and recycling. The latest report from groups that are part of The Transform Don’t Trash NYC coalition lobbies for haulers to bid for service in specific zones. The report says franchise zones will keep prices transparent and low for customers while ensuring...

Should curbside recycling be treated like other utilities that send customers a bill every month? And what effects will potential minimum wage increases have on materials recovery facilities? Those were two of the topics discussed during a recent webinar called "The Perfect Storm: Economic Impact of Changes in the Recycling Industry." Hosted by the National Recycling Coalition and Pennsylvania Recycling...

A Nevada mining and refining company announced it will start accepting e-scrap – specifically, ground up circuit boards from computers. Itronics Inc. plans to make silver bullion from its own internal silver concentrates and the silver found in recovered circuit boards. The company will also extract gold, palladium, copper and aluminum from e-scrap for other uses.An executive said the company...

A British man, who is no stranger to U.K. authorities, has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for fraudulent activities in electronics recycling. Terence Dugbo, who operates U.K.-based TLC Recycling Ltd., falsified paperwork regarding the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) he collected, the U.K. Environment Agency has found.According to a report on letsrecycle.com, Dugbo claimed to...

Veolia UK plans to reopen a shuttered plant in East London within the next few months. It recently purchased the facility from Closed Loop Recycling, which struggled in a tight market. Veolia, a giant in the fields of waste management and environmental services in Europe, announced earlier this month it bought the shuttered facility with plans to manufacture plastic bottles...

A grant from The Recycling Partnership is helping Athens, Ohio improve its curbside recycling program by switching from source-separated to commingled collection. The $80,000 grant will help the City buy larger recycling carts and provide educational and technical assistance. The City is contributing $155,000 to the effort. Athens is home to Ohio University, and many students live in multi-family housing....

The small city of Rock Island, Ill. is making changes to its curbside recycling program, and the single-stream system will now include glass. According to the Moline, Ill.-based newspaper Dispatch-Argus, Rock Island's five-year contract with Republic Services goes into effect Aug. 1 and will add more than a dollar to each customer’s monthly bill, making the price $3.90 per month....

Organization: Azevada Elementary School; Fremont, Calif. Grant: $5,000 Community Outreach Grant from Alameda County public agency StopWaste to improve food scrap recovery at the school through the Go Green Lunch Project. It was awarded for the 2014-2015 school year, and the program is now self-managing. A California elementary school has reduced its daily food waste generation from 10 bags to one,...

In the upcoming November election, Californians will have two measures to vote on regarding the state’s historic plastic bag ban. Last week, the California secretary of state announced an initiative related to fees on paper and reusable bags had received enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The initiative (15-0074) will join a separate ballot measure (14-0011) that asks...