QRS Recycling has sold its large Kentucky materials recovery facility, leaving the company with one plastic recovery facility and a stake in a manufacturing operation.
QRS Recycling has sold its large Kentucky materials recovery facility, leaving the company with one plastic recovery facility and a stake in a manufacturing operation.
The first Plastics Recycling Awards Europe honored people and products advancing plastics recycling.
Adding recovered plastics to biomass in a gasification process can increase the quality and volume of the end product, according to an industry-funded study.
China plans to prohibit imports of post-industrial scrap plastic by the end of the year, according to documents published by the country’s environmental department.
Testing protocols developed by the Association of Plastic Recyclers give brand owners the chance to prove their plastic packaging can be correctly sorted at materials recovery facilities.
China has issued its latest round of import permits for scrap materials, and approved volumes remain particularly low on the plastics side.
In the course of one year, Los Angeles-area exporters cut their scrap polyethylene shipments to China by 99 percent, leaving thousands of tons of plastic looking for a home. Other countries were only able to absorb about one-fifth of the volume.
Trade tensions between the U.S. and China have come closer to directly impacting the plastics recycling industry.
Prices continue to climb for PET and HDPE containers collected at the curb, but the news wasn’t so good for mixed plastics, which have a negative value in many regions.
An initiative that has been the source of industry debate over recovery of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging is awarding $100,000 in grants to expand to more communities.