Author: Megan Smalley

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed a lawsuit against Lake Forest, Illinois-based Reynolds Consumer Products Inc., the parent company of the Hefty bag trademark, and Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart for defrauding and deceiving Minnesota customers through the marketing of 30-gallon “recycling” bags. The complaint alleges that Reynolds and Walmart actively deceived consumers and profited from Minnesotans at the expense of the recycling industry.

Author: Stephen Lang

Germany is to take back around 35,000 tons of waste illegally dumped in Poland. Otherwise, Poland's Ministry of the Environment wants to file a complaint with the EU Commission. Poland's Deputy Environment Minister Jacek Ozdoba said in mid-May: "We expect Germany to take immediate measures to take back waste illegally shipped to Poland."

Author: Tatum McConnell

Negotiators at last week’s global plastics treaty talks in Paris agreed to create an initial treaty draft, but full inclusion of the countries and people most impacted by plastic pollution remains uncertain. The burdens of plastic pollution land heavily on low- and middle-income countries. High-income countries generated 87% of exported plastic waste between 1998 and 2016. Much of that exported plastic goes to developing countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. In these countries with limited waste management infrastructure, plastic clogs waterways, putting 218 million people at risk of devastating floods; it pollutes air with toxic fumes when burned, with waste burning causing an estimated 740,000 deaths per year; and it leaches toxic chemicals into the environment.

Author: Nation World News Desk

The ‘scam’ of exporting plastic waste. More than twenty civil society organisations, representing most regions of the Spanish state, described as “scandalous” the information released this week as a result of the Civil Guard’s Operation Plastic. And they demand that waste management be given priority in the programs for the next general elections to be held on July 23. What “allows to solve the failure of the selective collection of waste in Spain, specifically refers to plastics”.

Author: Michael Egbejule

A professor of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Forensics and Vice Chancellor, Igbinedion University Okada (IUO), Prof Lawrence Ezemonye, yesterday, advocated the use of technological innovations to manage plastic waste in Nigeria, saying Africa generated approximately 8.5 million out of 380 million tonnes of plastic waste generated globally. Ezemonye made the revelation during the university’s College of Natural and Applied Science yearly lecture, which coincided with the World Environment Day held in Okada, Benin. The theme of this year’s World Environment Day, is “Solutions to Plastic Pollution.”

Author: Brian Taylor

An early-June report published by the European Commission says 18 of 27 EU countries, known as member states, are at risk of not meeting 2025 targets tied to the reuse and recycling of municipal solid waste (MSW) and discarded packaging. The same countries also are at risk of not meeting a 2035 landfill diversion target. The EC has concluded just nine of its member states—Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Slovenia—are on track to meet the MSW and packaging 2025 targets.

Author: University of Portsmouth

A UK city has become the first in the world to use city wide surveys to track plastic waste, in an effort to tackle plastic pollution. The research, published this week in Marine Pollution Bulletin relied on the help of local people and businesses to map 'hotspots' of plastic rubbish in Portsmouth. The MAPP (Mapping Portsmouth Plastic) project is a world-first—a city-wide plastic survey, designed to help find solutions to reduce plastic waste in urban areas.

Author: Vietnam Plus

Jakarta (VNA) - Indonesia plans to phase out single-use plastic utensils and packaging by 2029, according to Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar. The minister revealed that the targeted items include polystyrene foam food packaging, single-use food utensils and plastic straws, plastic bags, multilayer packaging, and small-sized packaging.

Author: Emily Friedman

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Despite the global softening demand environment for recycled plastic resins, Q1 2023 US plastic scrap trade data shows increased import and export volumes in comparison to the lull seen in Q4 2022.

• US plastic scrap exports uncharacteristically increase, driven by grades of polyethylene (PE)

• US plastic scrap imports rebound marginally

• Canada and Mexico continue to be strong trade partners

In light of the consistent downward trend in plastic scrap exports over the last 10 quarters, Q1 trade data from the US Census Bureau – noted by the HS code 3915 – shows a reversal of trend with a 10% increase in volume quarter on quarter.

Author: Adam Morton

Industry will be forced to do more to cut waste and boost recycling after Australia’s federal and state governments agreed for the first time to impose mandatory packaging rules on manufacturers and retailers. The agreement, at a meeting of environment ministers in Sydney on Friday, was welcomed by conservationists as a major breakthrough after years of voluntary industry action has failed to reduce waste.

Author: Hannah Alcoseba Fernandez

The Philippines’ extended producer’s responsibility (EPR) law, which requires big companies to recover their plastic footprint, aims to encourage the people collecting the waste to turn their trade into a more formal privately held business, said a plastics recycling industry expert. “We have to build the infrastructure for the informal waste system and try to formalise and develop them [waste pickers] into entrepreneurs because that is what they are in their own right,” Crispian Lao, founder of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability (PARMS), told Eco-Business.

Author: Nation World News Desk

More than twenty civil society organizations, representing most regions of the Spanish state, described the information learned this week as a result of the Civil Guard’s Operation Plastic as “reprehensible” and demanded that the next general elections in July Program 23 of the election, has waste management as a priority, which will allow to “solve the failure of selective waste collection in Spain, especially with regard to plastics”. This same forum of organizations, which in March already condemned the Kingdom of Spain for non-compliance with the recycling objective before the European Commission and prepared for 50% reuse in 2020, values, which it The Civil Guard, after being revealed, “It shows once again that we are not only talking about a management problem, but it is an alarming lack of control and a total absence of transparency”.

Author: BBC Newsround

Microplastics have been found in every sample of sea water collected by sailors competing in a race around the world's oceans. During the Ocean Race competitors sail in some of the most remote parts of our seas, but not even these areas have escaped from plastic pollution. The level of microplastics found in the most recent samples were 18 times higher than the samples taken during the previous Ocean Race that ended in 2018.

Author: Michael Neilson

Government officials have admitted they have no idea what has happened to the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste shipped overseas to developing countries in recent years, including whether it actually gets recycled or ends up polluting the environment. The Herald can reveal since 2014, New Zealand sent over 300,000 tonnes of plastic waste overseas - mostly to developing countries with low or even non-existent environmental regulations around handling such waste.

Author: Packaging Europe

A major increase in PET imports threatens the EU’s capability of improving plastic waste management and its competitiveness in the industry, Plastics Recyclers Europe claims – responding with a call for fair policy covering imported plastics. EU trade data claims that India, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, and Vietnam were amongst the biggest exporters of a total 1.9Mt of PET imports between 2021 and 2022. Nearly 30% of the total demand for PET in Europe in 2022 was made up of imports, cites Plastics Recyclers Europe – a rise from the 23% reported in 2020. It is suggested that the increase could stem from growing demand for rPET in the EU, with prices rising within the European continent in anticipation of its target to implement 25% recycled content into beverage bottles by 2025.