The Recycling Partnership has identified three key initiatives to improve the current recycling system.
PET collection is lagging behind recycled resin demand by more than 1 billion pounds per year, according to a study, and investment of $500 million is needed to improve the situation.
London, Ontario has a goal of 60% waste diversion by the end of 2022. | Wei Seah/Shutterstock
London, Ontario approved a grant for a Hefty EnergyBag program, making it the first Canadian city to embrace the program for collecting hard-to-recycle plastics.
A grant from Hefty EnergyBag will allow Renewlogy to grow its staff to process more material. | Courtesy of Hefty EnergyBag
A program designed to collect hard-to-recycle plastics curbside is angling to send more materials to a site run by startup Renewlogy in Salt Lake City.
A handful of industry groups and plastics producers are teaming up on a 60-day effort to try to capture a wider variety of materials from the flow of curbside recyclables in Portland, Ore.
Recycled ocean plastic was recently used to create a small batch of “handplanes,” which are tools employed by bodysurfers. The project partners are planning additional, larger production runs.
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.
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.
Resin and packaging giants last week committed $1 billion over the next five years to “end plastic waste.” While recycling and sustainability stakeholders say they are encouraged by the effort, they also want to ensure materials recovery remains part of the solution.