Author: Sean Seddon

A ban on some single-use plastic products will come into force across England on Sunday. Shops and hospitality businesses will no longer be able to supply plastic cutlery, balloon sticks and polystyrene cups under the new rules. The government says the move will "tackle the scourge of litter and protect the environment from plastic pollution". But councils have warned that some firms are not ready for the change.

Author: Tom Wilfer

Yesterday the Bundestag decided on the levy rates for the new single-use plastic fund. With the majority of the government factions of the SPD, Greens and FDP, Parliament approved the disposable plastic fund regulation presented by the Federal Environment Ministry without any changes. This not only fixed the amount of the single-use plastic tax to be paid by manufacturers, but also defined the points system for disbursing funds to the public waste disposal authorities to eliminate littering.

Author: Recycling Product News Staff

The ISRI Board of Directors is considering changes to the Guidelines for Recycled Plastic that were approved by the ISRI Plastics Division on September 20, 2023. The deliberations will take place at ISRI's upcoming fall board meeting in Denver, Colorado on October 18, 2023.

Author: Schuyler Mitchell

Head south on State Highway 96, past a stretch of soybean crops and tobacco fields, and you’ll arrive in Zebulon, North Carolina, population 8,665. There, on a quiet stretch of Industrial Drive, sits a nondescript commercial building. It’s easy to miss; the name on the front door is barely legible. But atop that humble three-acre lot lies a leading solution to the global plastic pollution crisis — well, according to the plastic industry.

Author: Esmé E Deprez

Kyla Bennett, an ecologist and attorney in Easton, Massachusetts, subscribes to a school of thought called antispeciesism, which considers the preferential treatment of any animal species over another, humans included, to be unethical. So she’s long railed against the use of chemicals to kill insects, especially over a 26-square-mile stretch of freshwater wetlands and soggy woodlands near her home. For thousands of years, the Wampanoag people sought refuge and sustenance in the area and considered it alive with spirits. Today it’s called the Hockomock Swamp and retains lore of the paranormal, with reported sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs, but it’s mostly a place to walk dogs and paddle canoes.

Author: Chris Voloschuk

This week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas reintroduced legislation that, if enacted, would impose a 20-cent-per-pound fee on the sale of virgin plastic resin used to make single-use plastics. The Rewarding Efforts to Decrease Unrecycled Contaminants in Ecosystems (REDUCE) Act was first introduced by Whitehouse in 2021 with the goal of creating an incentive to recycle plastic and help reduce plastic waste he says “is disrupting coastal economies, overwhelming ecosystems and threatening public health.”

Author: Reilly Sullivan

Ten fire trucks and 100 firefighters are currently battling a blaze in Sydney’s west which has engulfed a plastics factory. The fire broke out on Thursday about 4am at a factory on Woodpark Rd in the suburb of Smithfield, in the city's west. The facility is believed to have been operational at the time the blaze started with about 30 workers inside the building.

Author: Peter Dennis

Rishi Sunak has scrapped “burdensome” proposals he says would “force” British people to have seven different bins in their homes. The Prime Minister announced the changes in a speech that signalled a major policy shift. Yesterday (19 September) reports emerged that Rishi Sunak was likely to scrap what he sees as “burdensome” recycling schemes as part of plans to weaken some of the government’s key net zero commitments.

Author: Danielle Renwick

In August 2019, the sprawling Kpone landfill, 25 miles from the center of Accra, Ghana, burst into flames. As the city’s only engineered landfill, Kpone had been collecting cast-off clothing from the United States and other wealthy countries for years. As they soaked up rain, the textiles trapped gases and chemicals that emanated from all that decomposing trash until, one day, the landfill exploded. The ensuing fire burned for eight months, engulfing nearby communities in smoke. “Waste has always been inflicted upon the margins,” said Oliver Franklin-Wallis, author of the new book, Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future. Waste, he writes, is often exported from rich countries to poor ones, a phenomenon known as “toxic colonialism.” 

Author: Nina Lakhani

The vast majority of the environmental projects most frequently used to offset greenhouse gas emissions appear to have fundamental failings suggesting they cannot be relied upon to cut planet-heating emissions, according to a new analysis. The global, multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry has been embraced by governments, organisations and corporations including oil and gas companies, airlines, fast-food brands, fashion houses, tech firms, art galleries and universities as a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint.

Author: Jordan Wolman

UP IN ARMS — New packaging regulations under debate in the European Union could become the next flash point in trade relations between Washington and Brussels. American industry groups have the attention of U.S. government agencies in their campaign against the European effort to cut down on the waste from packaging for consumer products ranging from fresh produce to mini shampoo bottles in hotel rooms, Jordan and Leonie Cater report.

Author: Jim Robbins

For two decades, researchers worked to solve a mystery in West Coast streams. Why, when it rained, were large numbers of spawning coho salmon dying? As part of an effort to find out, scientists placed fish in water that contained particles of new and old tires. The salmon died, and the researchers then began testing the hundreds of chemicals that had leached into the water. A 2020 paper revealed the cause of mortality: a chemical called 6PPD that is added to tires to prevent their cracking and degradation. When 6PPD, which occurs in tire dust, is exposed to ground-level ozone, it’s transformed into multiple other chemicals, including 6PPD-quinone, or 6PPD-q. The compound is acutely toxic to four of 11 tested fish species, including coho salmon.

Author: Megan Quinn

Plastics’ new outreach to legislators and brands underscores the tensions between industry and advocacy groups as more and more state lawmakers introduce bills that could impact plastic recycling and production. Plastics management has also been the subject of numerous federal hearings and bills in recent years.

Author: Lisa Song

The plastic crisis has grown exponentially. Despite marketing claims, less than 10% of the plastic waste from recent decades has been recycled. The rest gets incinerated, is buried in landfills or piles up as litter on land and in the water. Today, it is widely acknowledged that everything about plastic — from extracting fossil fuels to make it, to manufacturing products that use it, to disposing of it — can seriously harm public health and the environment. Plastics are a growing driver of climate change. As growth in renewable energy threatens the rule of fossil fuels, that industry is clinging to the creation of new plastics as its Plan B.