Associate Editor Jared Paben has worked for Resource Recycling since December 2014. Most of his earlier career was spent as a reporter for the daily newspaper in Bellingham, Wash., but he also has experience working for the Oregon volunteerism commission and for Oregon nonprofits serving low-income populations. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Waste Management reached a deal to acquire a controlling stake in Avangard’s U.S. film recycling business. | Courtesy of Avangard Innovative
The largest curbside garbage and recycling hauler in North America will acquire and scale up Avangard Innovative’s U.S. plastics recycling business.
TOP LUN Plastics Corporation received an LNO that covers the recycling of PET containers into single-layer clamshells. | Rattanapon Ninlapoom/Shutterstock
Ten companies with technologies to recycle post-consumer PET, HDPE and PP into food and drink packaging have received the federal government’s thumbs-up this year.
California’s carpet recycling rate in 2021 was 27.9%, up from 20.9% in 2020. | Colleen Michaels/Shutterstock
California’s extended producer responsibility program for carpet achieved a sharp increase in the recycling rate last year, jumping 7 percentage points from the prior year.
Thermoforms like those shown here often contain post-consumer material from bottles, but a California bill would require post-consumer thermoforms to be used in production of new thermoforms. | Anakumka/Shutterstock
Current debate over a California bill requiring PET thermoforms to contain RPET derived from thermoforms boils down to one question: What will materials recovery facilities do?
Estimated to cost between $30 million and $40 million, Phoenix’s project includes constructing a 70,000-square-foot building on the site of its original Bowling Green, Ohio campus. | Korn9/Shutterstock
Phoenix Technologies International kicked off a major PET recycling expansion project right as scrap PET prices tanked. But company leaders aren’t nervous because they are confident in the long-term demand for RPET.
Rick Perez, CEO of Avangard Innovative, a plastics recycling business that joined the second class of Apple’s Impact Accelerator program. | Courtesy of Avangard Innovative
Plastics reclaimer Avangard Innovative was chosen to participate in Apple’s business accelerator program, opening further opportunities for Avangard to do business with the tech behemoth.
Phoenix is working to double its PET recycling capacity by mid-2023. | Don Pablo/Shutterstock
PET reclaimer Phoenix Technologies International will double its capacity to produce food-grade RPET, allowing it to produce up to 140 million pounds a year, the company announced.
RePurpose Global is currently working with over 250 businesses around the world to reduce their plastic impacts through an offset credit system. | Courtesy of RePurpose Global
The majority of Fortune 500 companies are not on track to achieve their packaging sustainability commitments, a reflection of the gap between goals and on-the-ground impacts, Peter Wang Hjemdahl said.
U.S. companies exported 510 million pounds of scrap plastic during the first six months of 2022. | Piyathep/Shutterstock
The U.S. continued to ship less scrap plastic overseas during the first half of this year, federal trade data shows.
A judge determined the key issue was the availability of recycling programs, not whether bottles are made into new items. | Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock
If a bottled water label and cap are effectively unrecyclable, and if statistics show a majority of PET bottles are ultimately wasted, can the containers still be labeled as “100% recyclable”? A federal judge recently said yes.