Here’s the Waste Robotics Market News including the 10 key news of this week in waste and recycling industries.
US cities scramble to rewrite rules on recycling after China restricts foreign garbage
July 3rd 2018 – At this spring’s “ContaminationFest 2018” in Tacoma, in the US state of Washington, recycling advocates displayed the kinds of rubbish that some people mistakenly throw into their recycling bins. “It was everything from dead cats to diapers,” said Alli Kingfisher, recycling and materials management policy coordinator for Washington’s Department of Ecology. She called it “wishful” recycling; people imagine that their trash might have some value and should be repurposed.
Read More on South China Morning Post
Household recycling rates set to rise across Cheshire East
July 2nd, 2018 – A recycling company has been given the green light by planning chiefs to build a food composting plant in Crewe which will create eight full time jobs. Hull-based recycling company, Biowise, has secured a 15-year deal with Cheshire East Council to provide a composting plant to process food and garden waste from Cheshire East’s 370,000 residents. The composting plant will make it possible for food across the whole of Cheshire East to be recycled for the first time from late summer 2019.Latest figures have revealed Cheshire East Council is recycling more than 55 per cent of waste compared with less than 17 per cent almost a decade ago.
Read More on Middlewich Guardian
Tesco could start selling meals made from edible food waste
July 2nd 2018 – From a pea pod soup and vegan avocado cheesecake, to a bread and butter pudding made from the nubs of garlic bread and apple cores, chefs at Tesco’s new headquarters in Welwyn Garden City have been busy experimenting with how they can create meals from edible food waste and selling it to staff – with hints that it could eventually hit stores. The supermarket’s chief customer officer, Alessandra Bellini, says Tesco will “ideally” start selling meals created from food waste to customers – although whether that would be on the shelves or in cafes, and where it would sit from a pricing perspective, remains unclear at present.
The rise of the plastic-free, zero-waste grocery store
July 2nd, 2018 – As hotels, restaurants and cities continue to cut down on the use of single-use items like plastic straws and bags, supermarkets are also addressing their waste output. With ubiquitous reusable totes for purchase and plastic bag taxes, grocery stores have increasingly nudged shoppers worldwide to do without single-use items. But sometimes, the encouragement isn’t enough. A new shop in Vancouver, British Columbia, has reimagined the supermarket to combat plastic pollution. Nada’s concept is simple: All of the food sold inside is entirely package free. Shoppers bring their own clean containers and bags to fill with goods and can pay for bulk items by weight. The “tap-fill-pay” refill system aims to get rid of the overcomplicated process most bulk stores employ.
Changes in China affecting Kansas City recycling
July 2nd, 2018 – KANSAS CITY, Mo. — What we put in our recycling bins ends up in one of a small handful of facilities in the Kansas City area. Now, a big change in what China will import is hitting recycling around the world and in Kansas City. A full truck backed into the WCA Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Harrisonville, Missouri, to dump what it picked up from one residential route. They said they are the second largest MRF in the area and take in thousands of tons per month including from Kansas City, Missouri.
Read More Via Kansas City News
For restaurants, tracking food waste, costs ‘could be the difference between succeeding and going out of business’
July 2nd, 2018 – There’s an old joke about the restaurant industry that illustrates how hard it is to make a buck: How do you make a million dollars owning a restaurant? Start with $2 million. Faced with razor-thin profit margins, restaurant owners need a system to cut down on food waste and help remedy other common inefficiencies. SimpleOrder, an inventory management system, was founded in 2012 as a way to help restaurants run more efficiently.
Seattle ban on plastic straws comes into force as city gets tough on waste
July 2nd, 2018 – A ban on the use of plastic straws, utensils and cocktail picks came into force in Seattle on Sunday. The move makes Seattle the first major city in the U.S. to enact such a ban, it is believed. Under the directive, food service businesses in the city will have to provide customers with “compliant options,” such as straws made from compostable paper or compostable plastic, according to Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). If businesses do not comply with the new rules, they could face a fine of $250.
Almost two thirds of recycling collected in Barrow is contaminated
July 2nd, 2018 – COUNCILLORS tasked with overseeing the company which collects household waste and recycling in Barrow have flagged up “unacceptable issues” with the service. In March, April and May this year, a total of 563 tonnes of recycling was contaminated – 67 per cent of the total collected. That equates to the same weight as 46 double decker buses or 112 elephants. Barrow Borough Council’s overview and scrutiny committee has expressed concerns about the amount of contaminated recycling and said the issue leads to street cleansing ADVERTISEMENT issues.
Biogas news | Europe “must get ready for food waste collections”
July 1st, 2018 – Local authorities and municipalities across the European Union (EU), including in the UK, need to ‘get ready’ to introduce separate food waste collections, according to the heads of the global and UK food waste recycling associations. According to a press statement by the World Biogas Association, the EU has this month published in its Official Journal its Circular Economy Package, which includes new targets of 65% recycling of municipal waste by 2035 and separate biowaste collections by December 2023. The package will be binding on EU Member States from 4th July 2018, after which they will have two years to transcribe it into their own national laws.
Mandatory recycling is here. But how will it work?
July 2nd, 2018 – We can’t just keep dumping like there’s no tomorrow. Get ready to know your recyclables from your unrecyclables. According to environment infrastructure services MMC Nico de Jager, mandatory separation-at-source – recycling at home – has been in the pipeline since 2009. The reason it has taken the organisation so long to roll out mandatory recycling for residential households is simply because they were not ready. However, they are now confident this campaign will actually save Pikitup money, and not cost residents a cent extra. He was speaking at Pikitup’s media briefing session last week. It may seem intimidating, but Pikitup’s mandatory separation-at-source is actually a lot simpler than it seems.
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