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WM, Republic and a city in Virginia announced upgrades and plans for new MRFs. | Ken Wolter/Shutterstock
The mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia, announced a new MRF with artificial intelligence-powered sorting. Meanwhile, Republic Services announced a new facility near St. Louis, Missouri, and WM completed improvements to an MRF in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Winter weather and tariffs were top of mind for five of the largest publicly traded garbage and recycling companies in North America in the first quarter of the year. | Republic Services
Bad weather in parts of the country weighed on leading recycling companies’ first-quarter earnings, their leaders said, but overall they saw revenue increases. Continue Reading
Tokar/Shutterstock
In April, readers clicked on stories about the expansion and implementation of extended producer responsibility laws for packaging and paper, as well as a story on commodity pricing.
A secondary sorting facility pulling deposit containers out of mixed plastic bales was awarded funding from the state of California. | Hiv360/Shutterstock
California’s state recycling agency will provide $10 million toward a facility sorting plastics with resin codes 2-7, additional multimillion dollar grants for several major MRF retrofits, and a handful of smaller awards for localities to install recycling collection containers. Continue Reading
Almost 200 employees will be affected by the closure in St. Paul, Minnesota. | LookerStudio/Shutterstock
Smurfit Westrock is closing plants in Minnesota and Texas and is in discussions to do the same at two others in Germany, affecting around 650 employees total. Continue Reading
The state awarded nearly $12 million in grants for recycling infrastructure, including money to buy reverse vending machines. | Dennis MacDonald/Shutterstock
Michigan residents recycled more than 25% of household packaging materials in fiscal 2024, setting a record for the fourth consecutive year and leading officials to predict the state will meet its 2029 goal of a 30% recycling rate. Continue Reading
Extended producer responsibility was a hot topic throughout the three-day event held in Seattle last week. | Photo Courtesy of GreenBlue Org
A common complaint among MRF operators is that they have little meaningful contact with the packaging industry, despite dealing with headaches from that industry’s products every single day. Continue Reading
The final bill builds on previous legislation, resulting in an EPR program that will take shape in 2028. | Evan Lorne/Shutterstock
After five years of work and many interim steps, Maryland became the sixth U.S. state to pass extended producer responsibility legislation for paper and packaging, continuing the policy’s evolution in the country.
The initial recyclable materials list classifies just under a dozen material types as readily recyclable under Maine’s EPR program, but state representatives emphasized it was a first draft. | KWJPHOTOART/Shutterstock
More than 100 people showed up in-person and virtually to an informal stakeholder meeting on Maine’s draft material types list for the state’s extended producer responsibility program for packaging. Continue Reading