Author: Melissa Godin

It’s a hot afternoon in Iztapalapa, Mexico City’s most populous borough. Under the baking sun, Enriqueta Loreto is separating recyclables from waste. Every day, she goes door to door, collecting people’s waste in the hope of finding objects she can resell. “Nobody protects us,” said Loreto, who carries out her work as a waste picker informally, without a contract or social protection. “The government does not recognise us, nor the waste workers’ union. We have no protection.”

Author: Jane Nixon

The big brother of the ban on hard-to-recycle plastics is about to progress as the second tranche of the phase-out approaches. It means New Zealand will become the first country in the world to ban plastic produce bags as the haste to reduce waste moves forward. It started with phasing out plastic microbeads in 2018. The following year single-use shopping bags were banned. Last October, a raft of throw-away plastic items like PVC food containers and polystyrene takeaway food and drink packaging were discontinued in the first tranche of the phase-out.

Author: James Bruggers

ASHLEY, Ind.—Two years ago on a Friday evening in May, Kory Kistler was getting ready to leave work at a recycling plant marketed by its owners as being on the front line in a global war against plastic waste. Then all hell broke loose. Flammable, 700-degree vapors began spewing from a valve on a pump at the plant. “All of a sudden my operators on the ground started screaming over the radio,” recalled Kistler, a former Marine and a resident of Fort Wayne, 35 miles to the south. “It was hard to understand anything they were saying. So I was like, ‘I’ll go down, check it out and see what’s going on.’ And as soon as I walk outside, I see clouds of vapor in the sky.”

Author: Jared Paben

Reynolds Consumer Products faces yet another lawsuit over its recyclables collection bags, this time from Minnesota’s top legal officer. Provided by the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on June 6 filed a lawsuit against Reynolds and Walmart, accusing them of deceiving consumers with their marketing of Hefty brand recycling bags. Filed in Ramsey County district court, the complaint argues the bags themselves aren’t recyclable in the state and, when placed at the curb, render the whole bag full of materials unrecyclable.

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.