The 13th annual Plastics Recycling Conference, taking place this week in Tennessee, has brought together nearly 2,000 sector executives. That record-high number is a sign of the widespread industry thirst for connection and guidance at a time of unprecedented market disruption.
Two chemical companies have unveiled a full-wrap shrink sleeve label that comes off during a whole bottle wash. The development is part of a wider industry trend around recycling-friendly PET label strategies.
German and Paraguayan companies got the go-ahead to recycle PET into food packaging, and KW Plastics received a similar thumbs up for HDPE.
Both dry and wet de-labeling systems are helping CarbonLite’s new PET recycling facility overcome challenges from problematic bottle labels.
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The Ellen MacArthur Foundation recently honored a team at the University of Pittsburgh and an R&D company called Aronax Technologies Spain for their work improving the mechanical recyclability of flexible packaging for food.
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A North American recycling operation will open an e-plastics-focused facility in response to Chinese import restrictions.
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According to one product manufacturer’s analysis, HDPE can be shredded, melted and molded into products 10 times before its quality is compromised.
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Boatloads of readers clicked on stories about the fallout from China’s recovered plastics import restrictions. They were also drawn to coverage of an Australian film-recycling effort.
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TerraCycle office in Trenton, N.J. Credit: TerraCycle
TerraCycle is a high-profile company that gets a lot of press, but because it’s a private business, much has been unknown about its operations and income. A new financial filing provides details on how it manages post-consumer plastics, including which major reclaimer it relies on and where it sells recovered resins.
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Municipal programs are often short on funds, and it’s easy for recycling outreach to fall on the back burner amid budget constraints. East Hartford, Conn. recently took action on the issue by partnering with a plastics industry initiative.