The owner of a New Jersey electronics recycling company could spend three years in prison for insurance fraud. Albert Boufarah, the owner of Supreme Asset Management Recovery, based in Lakewood, N.J. admitted to a judge that he lied to get lower rates on his workers compensation coverage. A grand jury indictment handed up in February charged the company, Boufarah and...

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) suggested several amendments to an e-scrap reform bill that would hand greater program control to manufacturers. The state's recycling community said it objected to the changes. At a state Senate environment committee meeting today, John Gray with DEP presented the amendments, which include moving from a statewide plan to what DEP calls...

The majority of certified e-scrap processing facilities are located in the U.S., but for both R2 and e-Stewards, there has recently been a notable uptick in international action. The R2 and e-Stewards certifications address environmental, health and safety issues at electronics recycling operations and are spreading internationally due to successful implementation in the U.S.For R2, administered by Sustainable Electronics Recycling...

It's election season, and one hot-button issue is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which aims to significantly boost trading relationships between the U.S. and other countries. In the plastics recycling industry, however, opinions vary on whether the treaty would be good for business. The TPP involves a dozen countries surrounding the Pacific ocean. The goal of the deal is to boost trade...

Shoppers in California will pay a little more for carpet starting Jan. 1, and the price hike will help support recovery of the material. The consumer assessment fee will go from 20 cents to 25 cents per square yard of carpet sold or shipped in California. The fee is part of the carpet stewardship law that has been in effect...

A major U.K. plastics-to-fuel company is one of 10 companies participating in Unreasonable Impact, a two-week accelerator program designed to connect entrepreneurs and investors to address key global environmental and social issues. Recycling Technologies was chosen because of its Plaxx technology. The innovation is geared toward turning plastic waste into a low sulfur hydrocarbon. It was also selected because it...

Even the most well-intentioned residents don't always recycle. According to a recent set of studies, the reason why may be more complicated than just laziness or a lack of access. In tests recapped recently in the Harvard Business Review, researchers found two biases that affect disposal habits. The first is called distortion bias. People are more likely to throw an...

After nearly three years of discussion and testing around paper recycling, the EU Reffibre initiative has wrapped up with a final conference in Germany. The goal of the project, which was funded by the European Union and began in 2013, was to increase resource efficiency within the paper market and to help paper mills adopt innovative processes to maximize value....

The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) is studying the local waste stream to understand how to make better use of the $40 million worth of materials currently heading to landfill. SWACO wants to increase diversion and is working off a report from Battelle, a research and development organization, on how to do that. SWACO serves an area centered...

Whether you operate a small shredding operation or a larger e-scrap processing facility, safety must be a priority. The subject of safety was explored at an E-Scrap Academy session during E-Scrap 2016 in New Orleans last month. Diana Ceballos from the Harvard School of Public Health discussed the occupational and environmental health effects of the e-scrap industry and Lloyd Andrew...