Walmart promises move toward 100 percent recyclable, reuseable or compostable packaging Not all packaging is created equal. Go inside any Walmart and survey all the plastic packaging: There’s that flexible plastic used to box phone chargers, makeup, and socks. There are the clamshell-style plastic containers used for berries and tomatoes. And plastic shrink wrap. And […]

China’s decision to no longer be the dumping ground for the world’s recycled waste has left municipalities and waste companies from Australia to the U.S. scrambling for alternatives. But experts say it offers an opportunity to develop better solutions for a growing throwaway culture. It has been a year since China jammed the works of […]

World Wide Fund for Nature’s report says since the year 2000, the world has used more plastics than in all the years before. Bags, bottles, straws and plates – about half of the plastic used every day is used only once and then thrown away. This disposal after a single use is causing widespread damage […]

Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won’t take our papers and plastics, they’re ending up in the trash. After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, […]

In Philadelphia, people like to recycle. Together, all 1.6 million of us generate about 400 tons of recyclable material each day. But since last fall, roughly half of the bottles and cans my neighbors and I have placed dutifully curbside in our blue bins every week haven’t made their way to a sorting facility. They’ve […]

Try going a day without it. I bet you’ll say you can’t, but I’m going to challenge you anyway. Because, what if I told you that just by changing one thing in your life, you could save thousands, perhaps millions of lives? Would you do it? I hope so. The change I’m referring to is […]

With the recycling industry in flux, the rules surrounding recycling plastic aren’t always a given (at least, in the U.S.). For one, you can’t recycle plastic bags or straws and now black plastic is even becoming a problem. How will we ever know the right way to recycle? Given the confusion, it makes sense that […]

It’s easy to underestimate the significance of what’s been happening this year. That’s just the way mainstream media pundits and politicians want it. Thousands of children in Europe and Great Britain walked out of school to protest climate change inaction. In rallies and interviews with contentious and cynical reporters, they articulated the science, economics, and […]

The ocean is heating up, acidifying, and rising. Should we spend our energy on that and not straws—or does any attention on the ocean help spread awareness? When Seattle became the first major American city to ban plastic straws last summer, the anti-plastic straw movement was well underway. Alaska Airlines announced a plan to ditch […]

France-based CARBIOS, which develops bioindustrial solutions to ‘reinvent the lifecycle of plastic and textile polymers’, has announced its successful development of the first PET bottles made from 100% Purified Terephthalic Acid (rPTA), through the enzymatic biorecycling of plastic waste. PET is the most common polyester on the market. It is used to produce plastic packaging, […]