California legislators sent a number of recycling-related bills to the governor at the end of this session. | Leonid Adnronov/Shutterstock
When California’s legislative session ended Aug. 31, a number of recycling-related bills passed just before the deadline. Here’s a roundup of bills currently waiting to be signed into law and that have already been signed.
Thermoforms like those shown here often contain post-consumer material from bottles, but a California bill would require post-consumer thermoforms to be used in production of new thermoforms. | Anakumka/Shutterstock
Current debate over a California bill requiring PET thermoforms to contain RPET derived from thermoforms boils down to one question: What will materials recovery facilities do?
Estimated to cost between $30 million and $40 million, Phoenix’s project includes constructing a 70,000-square-foot building on the site of its original Bowling Green, Ohio campus. | Korn9/Shutterstock
Phoenix Technologies International kicked off a major PET recycling expansion project right as scrap PET prices tanked. But company leaders aren’t nervous because they are confident in the long-term demand for RPET.
Eric Hartz (center) spoke on a panel with Kate Bailey (right) at the 2022 Resource Recycling Conference. The session was moderated by Sarah Edwards (left). | Big Wave Productions/Resource Recycling, Inc.
Recent years have seen a steady stream of announcements from chemical recycling operators touting technological breakthroughs. But two industry insiders recently issued a stern reminder to the market: Don’t forget about economics.
Phoenix is working to double its PET recycling capacity by mid-2023. | Don Pablo/Shutterstock
PET reclaimer Phoenix Technologies International will double its capacity to produce food-grade RPET, allowing it to produce up to 140 million pounds a year, the company announced.
U.S. companies exported 510 million pounds of scrap plastic during the first six months of 2022. | Piyathep/Shutterstock
The U.S. continued to ship less scrap plastic overseas during the first half of this year, federal trade data shows.
A judge determined the key issue was the availability of recycling programs, not whether bottles are made into new items. | Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock
If a bottled water label and cap are effectively unrecyclable, and if statistics show a majority of PET bottles are ultimately wasted, can the containers still be labeled as “100% recyclable”? A federal judge recently said yes.
Recovered plastic end users Unifi and Greystone Logistics reported on increased profits recently. | Warut Chinsai/Shutterstock
Greystone Logistics is installing shredding and pelletizing equipment so it can purchase more lower-cost scrap polyethylene, as opposed to recycled resin. And Unifi is opportunistically buying PET bottle bales while it works to pass feedstock cost increases on to buyers of its recycled polyester.
Amazon recently noted it has on-site plastic film recycling systems at facilities across North America and Europe. | Bret Habura/Shutterstock
Amazon has eliminated more than 1.5 million tons of packaging since 2015 and created programs to increase recycling and diversion, according to its latest sustainability report.
August has brought precipitous drops in pricing for PET, color HDPE and polypropylene bales.