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, […]

Finally, there is a long overdue sense of urgency that something must be done about plastic bags. They have choked our planet, and killed our wildlife/marine life for years. Plastic never, ever, goes away. Here in Cumberland County, we have a very serious litter, dumping and plastic bag issue. I would consider it urgent. There […]

Walmart will be reducing their plastic waste, the company announced at their supplier growth forum. In their most recent press release the corporation outlined a set of commitments to be more environmentally friendly. • Seek to achieve 100 percent recyclable, reusable or industrially compostable packaging for its private brand packaging by 2025; • Target at […]

California lawmakers introduced legislation this week to phase out single-use plastic food containers and other packaging that can’t demonstrate it’s recyclable or compostable. Proponents of the legislation say it could help reduce the problem of plastic littering beaches and oceans. Last year the Golden State became the first in the nation to restrict the use […]

Australian swimwear company Zoggs launched a bathing suit line called Ecolast made from Econyl brand yarn manufactured using regenerated plastic waste. In addition, the company committed to switching to sustainable packaging across their product range by 2020. Econyl yarn is made by Aquafil using a system that starts with waste like abandoned ghost fishing nets, […]