Marissa Heffernan started working for Resource Recycling in January 2022 after spending several years as a reporter at a daily newspaper in Southwest Washington. After developing a special focus on recycling policy, they are also the editor of the monthly newsletter Policy Now. Heffernan can be contacted at [email protected].
Impacts on low-income residents drove the Vancouver, British Columbia city council to rethink its fee on single-use cups. | yy Apartment/Shutterstock
A year after it went into effect, Vancouver, British Columbia is moving to end its 25-cent fee on single-use coffee cups.
Gresham, Ore.’s educational materials explaining the new curbside battery recycling system to residents. | Courtesy of the city of Gresham, Ore.
Clackamas County, Ore. is the latest county in the state to adopt a different approach to battery collection and fire prevention.
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Small plastic items such as travel shampoo bottles often cannot be processed at MRFs. | Kris Black/Shutterstock
Five brands have partnered with a nonprofit and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find a way to keep small plastic items in the recycling stream.
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Wampologoma residents receive clean water provided by Kubi for Hope. | Courtesy of Kubi for Hope
Denis Kweri was looking for a way to raise money to build wells and schools in his hometown, and aluminum cans were his solution.
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Digimarc Recycle works by using digital watermarks and a cloud-based dataset of product attributes such as brand, SKU, product variant, packaging composition and others, to improve optical sorting technologies. | Courtesy of Digimarc
Expanding on earlier trials, Digimarc plans to test its Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0 in France on a larger scale. Continue Reading
The study looked at mechanical recycling and solvent-based dissolution of PE, PET and PP, as well as enzymatic hydrolysis, glycolysis and vapor methanolysis of PET. | tezzstock/Shutterstock
A study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory evaluated various PET recycling methods from technical, economic and environmental standpoints to provide a big-picture overview of today’s options. Continue Reading
According to research by The Recycling Partnership (TRP), in 2019, 14% of people surveyed said they were “not very confident” that things put in recycling bins were actually recycled. In 2020, that share had risen to 23%, and in 2022 it hit 30%. | Mary at T Comms/Shutterstock
This story has been corrected.
American consumers think recycling is of great importance, but their trust in the actual system has been slipping for years. A recent webinar brought experts together to brainstorm solutions.
The project, run by Return-It and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), resulted in about 94% usable plastic. | Huguette Roe/Shutterstock
In five months, Washington state residents in the greater Seattle area turned in over 25 tons of film to independent grocery stores as part of a pilot project. Continue Reading
Solid waste collectors had 34 reported workplace fatalities in 2021, down from 38 in 2020. | Sundry Photography/Shutterstock
Refuse and recyclable material collectors had the seventh-deadliest job in the U.S. in 2021, an improvement over the previous year’s sixth place.
Machinex brought a single-stream processing system and various other processing, baling and shredding equipment on-line at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | Courtesy of Machinex
New MRF equipment is coming to both Guantanamo Bay and Iowa. Meanwhile, commodity pricing for Ontario in November showed a mixed bag.
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