Industry groups want the federal government to add a variety of recycled-plastic products into federal procurement guidelines. | Suttipong Prangsuwan/Shutterstock
As the U.S. EPA updates its lists of recycled-content products purchased by federal agencies, plastics recycling stakeholders are making their voices heard.
A leader with Waste Connections said that his company has seen increased collection volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic. | Resource Recycling file photo.
Two large publicly held waste and recycling companies are taking in higher residential volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they say contamination has been flat. Recently, they’ve also started seeing critical upticks on the commercial side.
Ring Container Technologies began exploring and developing a PET canister to replace traditional composite can formats early in 2017. The first SmartCANs were shipped in June 2018. | Courtesy of Ring Container Technologies.
Ring Container Technologies wanted to understand the curbside recyclability of an all-PET container versus its existing polycoated paperboard canister. So it asked recycling programs themselves.
Among the recycling challenges with PET thermoforms are non-PET look-alike packaging and greater fines generation during the recycling process. | BravissimoS/Shutterstock
Several recycling industry trade associations will collaborate on a study to try to move the needle on recovery of PET thermoforms.
Market pricing for post-consumer plastics has remained relatively flat over the past month.
According to The Recycling Partnership, single-family households in the U.S. may be generating as much as 1.6 billion pounds of recyclable PP scrap each year. | Sodel Vladyslav/Shutterstock
An initiative from The Recycling Partnership will provide millions of dollars in capital to help sorting facilities install equipment for PP recovery.
Based on the lab-scale research, the Plastics Industry Association is now working with several companies to use a recycled-PE binder in asphalt on privately funded roadways and parking lots. | Marcel Derweduwen/Shutterstock
Research shows post-consumer PE film could improve the stiffness and resistance of polymer-modified asphalt at less cost than the co-polymers that are typically used.
A proposed California ballot measure would direct CalRecycle to charge producers up to a 1-cent fee for each single-use plastic package sold into the state. | RaksyBH/Shutterstock
A California court has given proponents of a California plastic waste initiative more time to gather signatures, all but assuring it will make the ballot, according to supporters.
News about the latest approvals to use recycling technologies to create recycled plastic for use in food packaging captured attention last month. | Dolores M. Harvey/Shutterstock
Readers last month were drawn to articles about consumer product brand owners, food-contact RPET approvals, a flexible packaging recovery project and plastics exports.
Researchers looked into multi-layer pouch recycling through the use of enzymes. | Ploylada/Shutterstock
A paper authored by a Spanish plastics research institute says enzymes can be used to degrade adhesive layers in multi-layer scrap materials, allowing the plastics to be separated for recycling.