Author: Justin Worland

Whenever I order food for delivery, I play a little game to guess how many sets of cutlery the restaurant will provide with my meal. Sometimes restaurants will throw in two, three, or four sets for just one order. But I rarely need any cutlery at all, and the waste goes in the trash or collects dust in a kitchen drawer. Researchers working with Chinese technology conglomerate Alibaba tried a simple fix to this pervasive problem. Instead of just wastefully doling out cutlery sets, the company required food-delivery customers in select cities in China to pick how many sets of cutlery they wanted to receive.

Author: Hellen Huang

On Monday, September 4, the United Nations Environment Programme published the zero draft of the new global plastics treaty. The text, based on previous negotiations, lays the foundation for a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution and could help confront some of the harmful impacts of plastics on the environment and protection of human rights. The draft proposes options to address the full life cycle of plastics, from reducing production to eliminating the use of the most hazardous plastics, with the goal of ending the export and recycling of plastics containing harmful chemicals – a promising first step towards a meaningful treaty.

Author: Rachel Cernansky

The world has been inching towards a deal to tackle plastic pollution, and the release of a rough draft of the Global Plastics Treaty by the United Nations Environmental Assembly and the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Monday marked the latest step toward that goal. Under a resolution agreed last year, 175 nations will sign a legally binding deal by the end of 2024. The treaty has the potential to be groundbreaking, environmental experts say, if the more ambitious options, such as limiting total plastic production, win out in the final text. If they don’t, it could turn into yet another agreement that promises a lot in theory but is meaningless in practice.

Author: Jared Paben

Recycled plastics prices are at their lowest levels in some time, putting significant strain on material processors. Meanwhile, some resin buyers are abandoning post-consumer resin to purchase virgin plastic instead. The lower prices can be seen in the scrap bale market and, to varying degrees, in the recycled resin market.  “The price of resin has definitely dropped significantly and it all boils down to supply and demand,” noted Tony Moucachen, who leads a family of plastics recycling companies, including prominent Pacific Northwest reclaimer Merlin Plastics.

Author: Geoff Giordano

The next step in the United Nations–led process toward a global plastics treaty has emerged in the form of a “zero draft” version released Monday. It will be negotiated at the third Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi in November. Amid many placeholders and options for different languages, the document offers avenues for reducing plastic production, eliminating polymers and “chemicals of concern,” eliminating short-lived and “avoidable” plastics, and creating targets and systems for plastics reduction and reuse.

Author: Argus Media
The UN Environmental Programme (Unep) has released the "zero draft" of its legally-binding treaty to tackle plastic waste, including options to restrict virgin plastic production and mandate recycled content requirements. The zero draft will be debated by participating states at the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in November. It sets out a number of potential measures taking into account the range of opinions from the second INC (INC-2) session. These include proposed upstream restrictions on plastic production, which were more likely to be favoured by developing countries, and downstream measures focused on circularity, design-for-recycling and waste management.

Author: Joseph Winters

In March 2022, 175 countries agreed to write a global treaty to address the plastic pollution crisis. Now, a year and a half later, they finally have a rough draft. The chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution on Monday released a “zero draft” of the global plastics treaty, laying out a long list of proposals and sub-proposals for how the world can stem the tide of plastic pollution. It includes language on reducing plastic production and eliminating hazardous chemicals, steps that experts say are needed to mitigate the industry’s harms. But advocates say negotiators need to do more work to establish how much reduction is needed, and to prevent an outsize focus on recycling.

Author: Recycling Magazine

The paper, entitled “A Zero Waste Vision for Fashion” examines the building blocks for a sustainable transition in the fast fashion industry. Central interventions are a ban on the destruction of unsold goods, targets on waste prevention and resource use as well as financial incentives for producers. The global shift from a linear economy to a circular one has long been touted as the answer to combat the overconsumption of precious natural resources. However, addressing this challenge also requires an overall reduction of material use. Policymakers must recognise major polluters’ market influence and move beyond blaming consumer choices.

Author: The Financial Express

BARCELONA/LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters): In a warehouse on the outskirts of Barcelona, women stand at conveyor belts, manually sorting T-shirts, jeans and dresses from large bales of used clothing - a small step towards tackling Europe's towering problem of discarded fashion. Within a year, the sorting centre run by garment re-use and recycling charity Moda Re plans to double the volume it handles to 40,000 metric tonnes annually. "This is just the beginning," said Albert Alberich, director of Moda Re, which is a part of Spanish charity Caritas and runs Spain's biggest second-hand clothing chain.

Author: Susan Shain

Jan Dell is a collector. But instead of art or action figures, she collects what she calls “bad plastic containers.” She is a connoisseur and a completist: Her specimens include lids from oatmeal canisters, cups from fast-food joints, cleaners wrapped in shrink sleeves, and many, many Amazon mailers. Each carries the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol; none, she believes, will ever be recycled.

Author: Environment Committee

Today, the Parliamentary Environment Committee has recommended by majority that NZ sets a deadline to phase out unlicensed plastic waste exports “to countries beyond Australia”, develop more comprehensive policies to avoid plastic waste creation, increase domestic infrastructure (recognising facilities in Australia), consider regulations to strengthen the licensing and monitoring of waste exports, and increase the monitoring of plastic exports to comply with Basel Convention requirements.

Author: David Thurton

Faced with a rising tide of plastic waste, the federal government is pursuing a plan to get supermarkets to cut down on their use of plastic packaging — a measure that could mean big changes to the shopping experience. Ottawa announced earlier this month that it's introducing a policy to require Canada's largest supermarket chains to develop and roll out plans to cut their plastic waste footprint. Environment and Climate Change Canada said it's now consulting with the supermarket sector on the proposed policy and hopes to implement it by the end of the year. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said the federal government has options to enforce the policy but would not say which measures it's considering at this point.

Author: Lianne Chia & Charmaine Tan

SINGAPORE: Throwing recyclable waste in the blue recycling bin at every public housing block, or down the centralised recycling chutes, could be almost second nature to some Singaporeans. But could it be an exercise in vain, particularly when it comes to plastics? According to the Singapore Environment Council (SEC), Singapore uses about 1.76 billion plastic items each year: 820 million plastic bags, 467 million polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and 473 million plastic disposables, such as containers, cutlery and cups.

Author: Paul Sanderson

There was a flurry of activity for some paper grades, and metals were up too. But plastics continued to struggle this week. But it is generally the case that market participants are waiting for the next couple of weeks to end before they feel they can gauge what is going on once the summer holidays are over. European markets were tough before the summer period, but there has been very little that has improved on that since.

Author: Reuters

FOUNEX, Switzerland Aug 25 (Reuters) - Lake Geneva, nestled at the foot of the Alps, has long been considered as a near-pristine body of water, but new research has found that its plastic pollution levels are as high as those in the oceans. Oceaneye, a Geneva-based non-profit that has for more than a decade been scouring the seas to collect plastic fragments, has turned its attention closer to home to landlocked Switzerland. "We compared the levels with the ocean data and reached the conclusion that the microplastic pollution on the lake surface is the same order of magnitude as the oceans," said Pascal Hagmann, the founder and director of Oceaneye.