The U.S. EPA’s budget is cut, but not nearly as deeply as President Trump proposed, under a spending plan passed by the House of Representatives last week.
Aligning recycling metrics with concepts such as sustainable materials management has been a challenge. But a researcher in Florida is offering intriguing possibilities in that area.
A new law in Iowa gives regulators statutory criteria they can use to determine whether companies are storing material for recycling or simply speculatively accumulating it.
Mathy Stanislaus, who served under President Obama, says current U.S. EPA leaders aren’t fully valuing materials recovery and are harming the industry by putting a singular focus on deregulation.
The 2018 spending bill approved by lawmakers and signed by the president last week contains good news for the U.S. EPA and its recycling-related programs: The agency avoided significant budget cuts that were proposed last year.
Steel and aluminum imports have been singled out by the White House, and though plenty of questions linger about the development, prices for recyclables could jump in the short term.
Extended producer responsibility rose to the forefront of debate in Connecticut as a strategy to reduce packaging waste in line with state mandates. A committee tasked with advising lawmakers during the coming legislative session recently split on the strategy, but the majority advised against it.
A legislative effort to update Iowa’s bottle bill has failed, as state lawmakers declined to send it out of committee for further consideration.
