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.
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.
The U.S. EPA accepted comments on recycling grant programs until late July 2022. | g0d4ather/Shutterstock
The U.S. EPA received several hundred suggestions for setting up two recycling grant programs authorized under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
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.
Researchers found success with partial depolymerization of virgin PET and PET bottles recovered from the sea. | Rich Carey/Shutterstock
A chemical recycling research project concluded that a partial depolymerization technique can break down scrap PET in a relatively short time and under mild conditions with little energy use.
A new effort from industry group The Recycling Partnership aims to assess and change behavior. | Air Images/Shutterstock
Recycling doesn’t work unless people can put material into the stream, so The Recycling Partnership is expanding its efforts to both understand and change consumer behavior at the bin.
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August has brought precipitous drops in pricing for PET, color HDPE and polypropylene bales.