Author: Robert Hodgson

Belgium, current holder of the rotating EU Council presidency, has forged agreement between governments over new rules to tackle the growing problem of discarded packaging materials, overcoming the European Commission's concerns over trade diplomacy. National diplomats have endorsed a new European law on packaging waste, including provisions that would hold overseas producers to EU environmental standards on plastic recycling at the risk of losing market access.

Author: Gloria Dickie

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - At least 3,000 more chemicals are in plastics — from food packaging to toys to medical devices — than previously estimated by environmental agencies, a report published on Thursday found, raising questions over pollution and consumer safety. While the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had previously identified around 13,000 plastic chemicals, the report by a team of European scientists found more than 16,000 chemicals in plastics — a quarter of which are thought to be hazardous to human health and the environment.

Author: Reuters

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - France is proposing a European Union ban on exports of used clothes, the environment ministry told Reuters on Thursday, as governments look for new ways to tackle the worsening problem of textile waste. United Nations trade data shows the EU exported 1.4 million metric tons of used textiles in 2022, more than twice as much as in 2000. The clothes can cause pollution in African countries where items that can't be resold end up in dumps, the EU has said.

Author: Nathan Canas

The European Parliament on Wednesday (13 March) backed targets for the prevention and reduction of food and textile waste across the bloc. However, environmental NGOs have criticised the proposal’s lack of ambition. At first reading, the Parliament adopted its position on the proposed revision of the directive on preventing and reducing food and textile waste in the EU. Adopted by 514 votes in favour, the report by Anna Zalewska (ECR, PL) proposes to amend the previous European legislation on waste, focusing on two major waste-producing sectors: textiles and food.

Author: Colin Staub

Although there are no chemical recycling facilities currently operating in the Pine Tree State, any starting up in the future will be considered “chemical plastic processing” operations subject to solid waste facility permitting, and their process will not be considered “recycling,” lawmakers recently voted. First introduced in April 2023, Maine’s Legislative Document 1660 is written as “an act to ensure proper regulation of chemical plastic processing,” which is commonly known as chemical recycling, “advanced” or even “molecular” recycling. All terms refer to a group of technologies that process scrap plastic chemically into its basic components (typically its monomers) rather than mechanically, through shredding, washing and re-pelletizing.

Author: Beatriz Santos

Exports of plastic waste to countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of mostly rich countries, has hit records highs in 2023, according to trade data collected by Plastic Waste Trade Watch. European Union plastic waste exports to Asia increased 45% from 2022. Total EU exports to non-OECD countries rose to 750 million kg in 2023 from 517 million kg in 2022. This is the highest level of plastic waste exports to Asia since China implemented the National Sword in 2018, the association revealed.

Author: Robin Latchem

Secondary plastics prices have increased slightly in February but ‘low prices and high costs are taking their toll’, says BIR. The world recycling organisation notes that freight costs have risen because of the situation in the Red Sea alongside limited demand for raw materials. Henk Alssema, of Vita Plastics in the Netherlands, makes the observations in the latest quarterly BIR Mirror. The chairman of the plastics committee points out that container shipping through the region has decreased by almost a third this year owing to the attacks on commercial vessels.

Author: Beatriz Santos

The European Parliament has voted for tougher rules to export waste from the block to countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of mostly rich countries. Exports of non-hazardous plastic waste to non-OECD countries will be prohibited, whilst those to OECD countries will be subject to stricter conditions. The European Parliament and Council first reached a provisional agreement on the new rules in November 2023. The ban on export of plastics will start two and a half years after the regulation comes into force.

Author: Aaron Ross

NAIROBI, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Waste produced by the public will surge by 2050, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage through biodiversity loss, climate change and deadly pollution, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report on Wednesday. The report said unless urgent measures were taken global waste generation would soar, driven largely by fast-growing economies, including in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where many countries are already struggling to manage current production levels.

Author: Harri Weber

For decades, plastic producers knowingly misled the public about the feasibility of plastic recycling, according to a recent study by the Center for Climate Integrity. The non-profit’s report details how the plastic industry marketed recycling as a solution to plastic waste for decades, all while dismissing it internally as both technically and economically unviable. This may be a tough pill to swallow for those who grew up hearing about the virtues of plastic in ad campaigns (see: “plastics make it possible”). However, statistically, most plastic is either landfilled or burned—just about 9 percent is ever recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental group. 

Author: Mark Smulian

Increasing imports of recycled plastics into the EU are deterring investment in recycling and threaten serious environmental consequences, trade body Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) has warned. Claims about transitioning to a circular economy would then “be empty words”, without action to encourage recycling rather than imports of plastics. It said the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation was intended to improve circularity by harmonising practices across EU member states and creating a market for recycled products. But, instead, the policy direction taken by European institutions was “making the initial optimism fade away”. 

Author: Dharna Noor

Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report. “The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”

Author: Joseph Winters

For 40 years, plastic and petrochemical companies have tried to convince the public that plastics can be recycled. But they’ve known for just as long that plastics recycling would never work. A report released last week by the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, or CCI, chronicles a “decades-long campaign of fraud and deception” from Big Oil and the plastics industry to promote recycling as a solution to the plastic pollution crisis. New documents show that industry executives pushed plastics recycling despite knowing since the 1980s that it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution,” and that recycled plastics would never be able to compete economically with virgin material. 

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.