Resource Recycling keeps you on top of critical industry trends and brings unparalleled analysis of the evolving materials stream, market turbulence, policy trends and more.
Sign up for our free weekly e-newsletters to receive the latest news directly.
Unilever uses about 118,000 metric tons of plastic packaging in North America each year, half of which is post-consumer resin. | Peter Bueno/Shutterstock
Unilever North America will invest $15 million in the Closed Loop Partners Leadership Fund, a private equity platform that helps grow companies in the recycling value chain.
Legislation to be reintroduced will include provisions for a national bottle bill and a ban on certain single-use plastic items. | S-F/Shutterstock
Two members of Congress will revive the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which includes a national container deposit system and other sweeping changes. Representatives from the plastics industry have countered the push.
About 40% of the feedstock consumed by Constellium last year was scrap material. | pim pic/Shutterstock
Global aluminum manufacturer Constellium, which operates a large recycling site in Alabama, says it boosted the amount of production scrap it recycled last year.
The mill’s completion is on schedule with the initial timeline, which forecast a spring 2021 start-up. | Courtesy of Green Bay Packaging.
Green Bay Packaging this month produced the first reel of paper at its newly completed Wisconsin recycled paper mill, which uses OCC and mixed paper feedstock.
Over $500,000 was awarded to nine local governments and one university to support local markets for recovered materials. | Jeffrey B. Banke/Shutterstock
A new recycling development center in the Pacific Northwest has issued over half a million dollars in grants to help boost domestic markets for recyclables.
Prices for a slew of curbside recyclables – OCC, UBCs, PET, HDPE and PP – all surged over the past month, bringing good news for MRFs.
California Assembly Bill 842 requires that by 2035, all single-use plastic packaging and products distributed in California include 75% post-consumer recycled content. | Kanittha Boon/Shutterstock
California legislators introduced a bill that creates a packaging stewardship organization and adds packaging fees paid by producers. The bill is the latest in a flurry of plastics-related legislative activity in the state.
U.S. exports of recovered fiber were up slightly in January 2021 compared to the previous year. | anek.soowannaphoom/Shutterstock
Exports of U.S. scrap paper and plastic increased in January 2021 compared with 2020, despite China’s exit from the recovered paper market and new Basel Convention regulations on plastic shipments.
The REMADE Institute issued funding to projects exploring a variety of recycling technologies. | Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
A federal initiative focused on energy efficiency in U.S. manufacturing recently selected two dozen recycling projects to support. A majority of the projects are related to plastics recycling, but others target fiber, metals and more.
For 2020, SWANA reported 36 collection/transportation worker deaths, the same number as 2019. | Eric Buermeyer/Shutterstock
The number North American MRF workers killed on the job last year decreased, but the total number of garbage and recycling sector deaths remained flat, according to industry data.