Retailers supplied composite lumber manufacturer Trex with more than 130 million pounds of recovered film last year. Meanwhile, production issues reduced company profits in the first quarter.
Retailers supplied composite lumber manufacturer Trex with more than 130 million pounds of recovered film last year. Meanwhile, production issues reduced company profits in the first quarter.
Tech giant HP recently spent $2 million to help improve infrastructure for recovering plastics at risk of entering the ocean. The investment is expected to create jobs in an impoverished area and move more material into the recycling stream.
The scrap plastic trade will receive focus this week in Switzerland, where countries are meeting to discuss and consider amending global waste regulations.
An initiative that collects hard-to-recycle packaging from the curb in several cities could be extended to another 100,000 households by the end of this year, a plastics executive said.
As international leaders consider action in response to plastic pollution, environmental activists are arguing that turmoil around scrap exports is exacerbating the problem.
Scrap plastic shipments from the U.S. declined from 122 million pounds in January to 120 million pounds in February. That February volume was the lowest single month of plastic exports since December 2003.
A bill that would require 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic to be used in beverage containers by 2035 is gaining traction in America’s most populous state.
Scrap plastic traders continue to circumvent import restrictions in one Southeast Asian country by labeling recovered plastic as another type of commodity.
The price of natural HDPE has continued to drop and now sits well below its position a year ago, but recovered PET values have remained constant.