The city of Tuscon plans to use ByFusion’s blocks to expand a women’s shelter, among other projects. | Courtesy of ByFusion
A company that turns hard-to-recycle plastics into construction-grade building blocks signed a four-year contract with the city of Tucson to expand drop-off collection and further develop local manufacturing.
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Residents in the Omaha, Neb. area can participate in a program to divert plastics not accepted in the normal curbside stream. | Courtesy of Hefty
Firstar Fiber’s in-house plastic-to-lumber operation is up and running, turning materials collected in orange bags at the curb into plastic composite lumber. The operation also recently survived a fire scare. Continue Reading
Increasingly, companies and industry groups are focusing their efforts on recycling carpet. | Optimarc/Shutterstock
The California carpet recycling rate rose by about 5 percentage points last year, reaching a record high of 33%. Meanwhile, carpet manufacturer Shaw reached a deal to recycle about 2 million pounds of production scrap a year. Continue Reading
Bagged recyclables cause major headaches for MRFs, so the state of Washington wants to teach people to fill their bins with loose items. | Alexander Lukatskiy/Shutterstock
Washington state is looking to convince residents to stop bagging recyclables, according to officials and industry partners.
KC Recycling is heavily involved in recycling lead batteries, which are roughly 4-5% polypropylene by weight. | Courtesy of KC Recycling
A British Columbia recycling company has struck a supply deal allowing true closed-loop recycling of polypropylene from lead batteries.
Waste Management (WM) has committed to investing more than $800 million to enhance recycling infrastructure, including $56 million to upgrade three Pacific Northwest materials recovery facilities (MRFs). | Pavel Kubarkov/Shutterstock
Dow and Waste Management are partnering on a pilot program that will give some Chicago residents the option of recycling plastic films curbside.
Global consulting firm McKinsey & Company views secondary sortation facilities and high prices for PCR as potential avenues for preventing non-bottle plastics from going to landfill. | TY Lim/Shutterstock
Plastics producers rolling out chemical recycling technologies can access new feedstock streams by helping to finance secondary sortation facilities, according to a McKinsey study.
LyondellBasell will chemically recycle scrap plastic feedstock produced by the Cyclyx sorting facility in Houston. Pictured are LyondellBasell’s crackers at its Channelview, Texas complex, which is near Houston. | Courtesy of LyondellBasell
Global plastics producers will invest about $100 million in a plastic scrap sorting facility to generate feedstock for both mechanical and chemical recycling processes.
Founded in Costa Rica in 2018, CRDC now operates in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Africa, Mexico, the U.K., New Zealand and Hong Kong. | The Image Party/Shutterstock
CRDC Global is turning hard-to-recycle plastic into a concrete additive in Pennsylvania and plans to expand across the country as quickly as it can. Continue Reading
The study demonstrated 99% accuracy for the detection and sortation of films and flexibles. | Courtesy of Digimarc
A Canadian group’s study of Digimarc Recycle’s digital watermark showed that it does in fact improve accuracy for sorting flexible plastic packaging.