A beverage heavyweight pledges $6 million to the Closed Loop Fund, and a European effort leads to a plastic-free blister pack.
A beverage heavyweight pledges $6 million to the Closed Loop Fund, and a European effort leads to a plastic-free blister pack.
Recycling stream shifts driven by e-commerce are leading one hauler to seek higher collection charges, and the largest MRF in the Southern Hemisphere opens in Western Australia.
A newsprint mill using recycled materials announces it will idle indefinitely, and a handful of recycling groups and companies have issued statements in the wake of the Trump Administration’s move to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
A co-founder of the Closed Loop Fund weighs in on the recycling impact of the proposed U.S. EPA budget cuts, and U.K. exporters say China’s National Sword policy is complicating plastic film shipments.
Lawmakers support a landfill fee that funds recycling in one state, and an Arkansas community sees its contamination rate settle after multiple years of dramatic increases.
A state-chartered fund involving public and private interests is helping expand and improve recycling in Connecticut.
A Waste Management leader’s thoughts on contamination in the material stream and the possibility of a ban on imports of recycled materials into China drew our readers’ clicks last month.
Starting in October, shoppers in America’s largest city will be charged a nickel for each paper or plastic bag they are given at checkout.
How has the materials recovery industry progressed in its ongoing efforts to increase diversion?
To offer a portrait, Cascadia Consulting utilized data from the U.S. Census, the Washington state Office of Financial Management, and publicly available information from the state of California, the City of Seattle and King County, Wash.
The charts below indicate a drop in per person landfilled quantities of divertible materials on an annual basis.
Nonetheless, the fact that there are still quantities of recyclables and food/yard waste being landfilled points to an opportunity. Does that mean more education and outreach, improved practices, more aggressive policies, or a combination of those strategies?
Data Corner is compiled monthly by recycling consultancy RRS. For this edition, the company collaborated with Cascadia Consulting.This article originally appeared in the April 2017 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
A second study from manufacturers of food packaging aims to drive home the point that the products from those companies are not too contaminated for curbside recycling.
The recently conducted effort from the Foodservice Packaging Institute follows the first segment of the report, which was released at the end of last year.
The latest research looked at a sampling of 2,600 pounds of residential recyclables collected in southern Delaware. Researchers separated the material into two categories – foodservice packaging and other packaging in contact with food – and then went through the loads on an item-by-item basis. Products were given one of three ratings: high food residue contamination, medium or low.
The two categories proved to have roughly the same proportion of low- and high-level contaminated products, according to FPI’s report. The foodservice packaging had a slightly higher proportion of medium-level contamination.
FPI’s earlier study, which looked at samples collected in Boston, found roughly similar contamination levels across the board when looking at foodservice packaging and other materials that came into contact with food residue. Together, FPI stated, the two studies indicate tubs, lids and other material categories in the foodservice realm should be regularly included in residential recycling streams.
“One of the most common reasons that municipal programs do not accept foodservice packaging is the concern about increased levels of food contamination in recyclables,” Lynn M. Dyer, president of FPI, said in a press release. “The encouraging results of the Delaware study provide us a different representative sample of food residue on foodservice packaging. They assist in corroborating our findings of foodservice packaging residue as a perceived barrier in recycling programs rather than a real obstacle.”