Single-use packaging is easy to spot. A short walk along a beach, anywhere in the world, will reveal the consequences of our throwaway culture as each tide brings in a fresh layer of debris, most of it single-use plastics.
Single-use packaging is easy to spot. A short walk along a beach, anywhere in the world, will reveal the consequences of our throwaway culture as each tide brings in a fresh layer of debris, most of it single-use plastics.
Over the past several months, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) has been studying the issue of degradable additives and how the inclusion of these compounds in the manufacture of plastic items can impact their recyclability. Continue Reading
The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) commends PepsiCo for recent statements from Vice President Roberta Barbieri supporting the value of bottle bills for producing clean materials for bottle-to-bottle recycling. However, it is important to point out inaccuracies in Ms. Barbieri’s statements, particularly about the cost-effectiveness of bottle bills (container deposit laws).
While prices for recovered PET and HDPE have remained steady or increased, post-consumer film values continue to nose-dive.
China’s import policy changes are straining recovered plastics export markets, particularly impacting mixed rigids. Recycling companies have been forced to stockpile and even landfill the materials, while numerous municipal programs have stopped accepting mixed plastics.
Recyclers depend for their survival on demand for plastic products made with their recyclate, but plastic is under attack from environmentalists, and line after line – and sometimes whole factories – are closing.