Researchers have found a way to convert post-consumer LDPE and HDPE into energy-storing carbon that can be used in batteries.
Multinational oil and gas company MOL Group will acquire a German recycled plastics compounder.
Readers last month were drawn to articles about a brand owner’s RPET ambitions, markets analysis, gasification technology, scrap smuggling and legislation.
Retailers supplied composite lumber manufacturer Trex with more than 130 million pounds of recovered film last year. Meanwhile, production issues reduced company profits in the first quarter.
Tech giant HP recently spent $2 million to help improve infrastructure for recovering plastics at risk of entering the ocean. The investment is expected to create jobs in an impoverished area and move more material into the recycling stream.
Geneva, Switzerland
The scrap plastic trade will receive focus this week in Switzerland, where countries are meeting to discuss and consider amending global waste regulations.
An initiative that collects hard-to-recycle packaging from the curb in several cities could be extended to another 100,000 households by the end of this year, a plastics executive said.
As international leaders consider action in response to plastic pollution, environmental activists are arguing that turmoil around scrap exports is exacerbating the problem.