Here’s the Waste Robotics Market News including the 10 key news of this week in waste and recycling industries. This week, municipalities, cities, population and companies get involved in recycling and reducing waste.
Coun. Elizabeth Ball pushes to establish creative reuse program modelled after New York’s Materials for the Arts
July 23, 2018 – NPA councillor Elizabeth Ball will bring forward a motion to the City of Vancouver this week to create a new arts-centred program modelled on New York City’s Materials for the Arts (MFTA) program. Ball’s motion refers to the successful MFTA program and its creative reuse of materials that may otherwise make their way into the landfill by the arts and culture and educational communities.
Read more on The Georgia-Straight
Phoenix solicits proposals for plastics processing facility
July 26, 2018 – This plastics repurposing program would be part of the Reimagine Phoenix initiative, launched in 2013, which has the goal of a 40% waste diversion rate by 2020 and zero waste by 2050. Last year, the initiative progressed significantly as the city spearheaded efforts to enter into partnerships and launch competitions to address solid waste issues in addition to recognizing businesses that are voluntarily recycling. Its diversion rate consequently jumped to 30% last year, a 10% increase YoY.
The Dirty Truth Is Your Recycling May Actually Go To Landfills
July 24, 2018 – Americans recycle millions of tons of trash every year. We trust that the items we toss in the blue bin won’t end up in a landfill. We hope this stuff is repurposed and turned into reusable goods ― but a lot of it isn’t getting recycled at all. Two-thirds of U.S. states are facing a recycling crisis of our own making. For months, mountains of plastic, paper and other materials have been piling up at recycling facilities across the nation.
Read more on The Huffington Post
Zero-waste camping is possible, and you can do it with these tips
July 29, 2018 – You might already be familiar with the idea of leave-no-trace camping: whatever you bring in, take it right out again. If you add zero-waste principles to that equation, you’ll end up with a pretty light load (garbage-wise, anyway — your reusable-container load will probably be hefty). As challenging as it sounds, a pair of clean-living experts say the two ideas go hand in hand and employing them both at the same time is doable, with a little planning.
Turning food waste into meals in Toronto
July 27, 2018 – A novel new program is helping to turn food destined for the garbage into a meal for people in need. Brandon Rowe reports on how FoodRescue.Ca works.
Read more on City News Toronto
IN DEPTH: Engineering Enzymes to Reduce Plastic Wastes
July 27, 2018 – Patented as a plastic in the 1940s, polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, has become ubiquitous. Virtually shatterproof it offers an extremely high strength-to-weight ratio and does not react to food or water. Throw in its low production costs and you have an almost perfect packaging material – and we’ve not even touched on its uses for fabrics and textiles.
Read More on Waste Management World
Cascades Acquires Virginia Plant to Produce Recycled Linerboard
July 30, 2018 – Canadian sustainable packaging and tissue products manufacture, Cascades, has acquired White Birch’s Bear Island paper plant in Virginia for $34.2 million. The company said that it will reconfigure the newsprint paper machine at the facility to enable the production of recycled lightweight linerboard. White Birch will temporarily operate the site as a newsprint mill under a 27-month lease, following which Cascades will convert the equipment at the plant, with an estimated investment of $275-$300 million.
Read More on Waste Management World
What A Waste: Online Retail’s Big Packaging Problem
July 29, 2018 – Americans love online retail – the channel grew by 16% last year in the US, while all retail rose 3.8%. We love the speed and convenience. We love the ‘just-got-a-gift’ feeling of boxes turning up on our doorstep. We love Amazon too – one fan back in 2014 remarking, “I’m in a monogamous relationship with #amazonprime.” But love, as they say, is blind. And as consumers, we turn a blind eye to the environmental cost of online retail, particularly when it comes to packaging.
Food waste is a global problem
July 25, 2018 – Each year, the average family of four in America throws $1,800 in the garbage. Not in cash. In moldy vegetables. In uneaten hamburgers. In leftovers from the local pub. A scourge besets the United States: the rampant waste of food. In this country, we throw out more than 1,250 calories a day per person — or more than 400 pounds of food for each person every year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
How to turn the waste crisis into a design opportunity
July 25, 2018 – You might never have heard of expanded polystyrene, but you’ve definitely used it. It’s the lightweight white foam used for everything from packing peanuts to holding boxes of veggies at the supermarket. Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is versatile, waterproof, and surprisingly strong. Unfortunately, it’s also a nightmare to dispose of. It fragments easily into many small, light pieces which can be easily carried away by the wind, and is difficult to process.
