Author: Michael Copley

The plastics industry has worked for decades to convince people and policymakers that recycling would keep waste out of landfills and the environment. Consumers sort their trash so plastic packaging can be repurposed, and local governments use taxpayer money to gather and process the material. Yet from the early days of recycling, plastic makers, including oil and gas companies, knew that it wasn't a viable solution to deal with increasing amounts of waste, according to documents uncovered by the Center for Climate Integrity.

Author: Aryn Baker

I have a problem with the F-word, in that I use it far too freely. So, in an effort to raise a child with better manners than her mother, I implemented a household swear penalty system. Every time I dropped the F-bomb, she got 25 cents. Several years on, I can report that my language has not improved, but my daughter’s finances certainly have. My parenting fail feels not too dissimilar to the nascent industry of plastic credits. Like its better-known enviro-financial cousin the carbon credit, it is a system in which companies with a large plastic footprint can, theoretically, mitigate their impact.

Author: Hiroko Tabuchi

Almost a decade ago, California became the first state in the United States to ban single-use plastic bags in an effort to tackle an intractable plastic waste problem. Then came the reusable, heavy-duty plastic bags, offered to shoppers for ten cents. Designed to withstand dozens of uses, and technically recyclable, many retailers treated them as exempt from the ban.

Author: Center For Climate Integrity

WASHINGTON - Big Oil and the plastics industry have created and perpetuated a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics that has directly fueled the plastic waste crisis, according to a new report from the Center for Climate Integrity that features never-before-published internal industry sources.

Author: Frankfurter Allgemeine, translated from German

According to statistics , German plastic waste exports to Asia increased by almost half last year. In 2023, around 158,000 tons of plastic waste were shipped from the Federal Republic to Asia, around 51,000 tons more than a year earlier, the waste disposal association BDE said in response to a dpa request. The information is an estimate: official statistics are available for the first ten months of 2023, and an association projection for the last two.

Author: Packaging Europe

Eurostat calculates the amount of municipal waste generated per person in the EU at 513kg in 2022 – down by 19kg from 2021, yet 46kg higher than in 1995 – and an average of 249kg recycled by each citizen, 15kg lower than three years ago. The highest amount of municipal waste is thought to have been generated in Austria at 827kg per person, followed by Denmark at 787kg and Luxembourg at 720kg. Romania (301kg), Poland (364kg), and Estonia (373kg) are named as the lowest waste generators.

Author: James Bruggers

Two environmental organizations are challenging a draft state report on California’s “Truth in Labeling” recycling law, saying the preliminary data it contains could allow companies to make broader plastics recycling claims than the 2021 law allows and reveals potentially illegal exports of plastics waste to Mexico. The report is based on data obtained from a survey of facilities that collect, sort and bale a variety of waste for potential recycling, including paper, metals and plastic. 

Author: DutchNews

More plastic is ending up in incineration plants and producing harmful CO2 emissions despite efforts to promote recycling, caretaker environment minister Vivianne Heijnen has said in a briefing to MPs. In 2022, some 52% of discarded plastic was burnt, compared to 49% the year before. Much of the plastic waste was contaminated by food residue or chemicals, making it unsuitable for recycling. There was also insufficient capacity at recycling plants, Heijnen said.

Author: Colin Staub

U.S. recovered paper exports in 2023 reached a 19-year low, driven by major multi-year declines in shipments into key overseas markets. Recovered plastic exports dropped slightly year over year, bringing a record low for another consecutive year. The U.S. Census Bureau, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, recently released December 2023 export figures, allowing for a full-year analysis.

Author: Noah Daly

MATTAPAN, Mass. — A bird calls through the canopy of autumn leaves as Amenyonah Bossman walks onto Livermore Street. She’s lived just one block away for the past 20 years along with her three sons. Their neighborhood, one of the poorest in Boston, has few spaces to escape urban sprawl. This tree-lined road, nestled between the urban wilds of the Kennebec Marsh and the dense tract of the Pendergast Preventorium Park, is a gift for the community, Bossman tells me. Or at least it could be.

Author: Bella Zanin

The Environment Agency (EA) has launched an Economic Crime Unit to investigate serious financial offences in the waste sector. The new unit, an expansion of the EA’s Financial Investigations Team, aims to ensure waste operators “do the right thing” and prevent organised criminals making money from illicit waste activities. Highly skilled staff - including Accredited Financial Investigators, Accredited Financial Intelligence Officers and a Financial Crime Analyst - will work with partners across law enforcement, such as the police and HMRC.

Author: Corey Dehmey and Jim Puckett

We may have started from different perspectives, and we may have different points of emphasis, but the e-Stewards and R2 standards have each played a highly significant role in improving the sustainability of electronics in the last few decades. It is certain that certification programs now serve to differentiate the good actors – the leaders who follow applicable laws, protect the earth, workers and communities – from the laggards, who do not.

Author: Beatriz Santos

Exports of plastic waste from the European Union to countries worldwide has been growing steadily in the past decade. EU plastic waste exports to non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, a group of mostly rich countries, rose to 58.9 million kg/month in August 2023 from 28.1 million kg/month in May 2022.

Author: Daisy Dumas

More than a year after the demise of REDcycle, Coles and Woolworths customers are still incorrectly being told they can return soft plastic food packaging to stores, where they will be handled by the now-defunct recycling program. So what’s going on?

What are soft plastics? Simply put, they’re plastics that can be scrunched into a ball. The term covers bread and cereal packets, vegetable packaging, chocolate bar wrappers and clingfilm. Australians use 70bn pieces – or about 538,000 tonnes – of soft plastics each year, according to the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (Apco).

Author: Jabed Ahmed

Shocking pictures have revealed Hermit crabs are increasingly turning to plastic waste as armour for their bodies amid record levels of pollution in the world’s oceans. The findings are based on analysis of photos taken by wildlife enthusiasts and the discovery have been published as part of a study in the journal Science of the Total Environment.