More than just being a pivotal year for recycling, I hope 2018 is a pivotal year for humankind. Our survival depends on us protecting “the commons” (our shared land, forests, oceans, air and other natural elements). However, we as a society continue to allow financial reasons to get in the way of fully protecting our most essential resources.
At the 2018 Waste Management Sustainability Forum earlier this month, the leader of a startup called Zipline presented an idea that was quite outside the realm of recycling but that could nevertheless help to inspire our industry’s sense of strategic thinking.
We’re planning to go to Mars. Not tomorrow, but someday. Hopefully soon.
Since its founding in 1987, our organization, the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), has worked to expand boundaries while staying true to our foremost mission of protecting and promoting the PET package.
Accelerating the transition to a circular economy has become a high priority for major companies and governments around the globe.
Nina Bellucci Butler of More Recycling states correctly in a Sept. 27 article in Plastics Recycling Update that “we have capacity to purchase HDPE, PET, PP and other resins. We don’t have the capacity to take the material from the MRF [and] further segregate it so we can get those discrete resins to market.”
Michael Stephen, Oxo-biodegradable Plastics Association
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.
Susan Collins
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).
Jonathan Levy
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