A firm has designed a robot to take apart mattresses for recycling, and a fee on plastic bags seems to be diverting them from curbside bins.
The fee is working: In the one year since a 5-pence fee was added to plastic bags in the U.K., waste management firm Veolia says it has seen a large decrease in the number of plastic bags in its MRFs. Letsrecycle.com reports Veolia has seen a 75 percent decrease.
Mattress recycling robot: A company claims to have developed the world’s first automated mattress recycling machine, according to MRW. The machine is able to separate the steel springs and the polypropylene fabric from the rest of the materials so they can be recycled.
WTE spree: Lockheed Martin is building another waste-to-energy facility, says environmentalleader.com. The plant in Cardiff, Wales is expected to open in 2020 and will join several other Lockheed Martin WTE plants in Europe and the U.S.
Coffee cup for your coffee cup: Several garbage cans, designed to look like giant coffee cups, have been placed around Manchester to collect only coffee cups. The goal of the campaign is to collect 20,000 coffee cups and recycle them into other products.
