Here’s the Waste Robotics Market News including the 10 key news of this week in waste and recycling industries. Waste sorting becomes more and more important. However, new options are found to fix this issue.
The American recycling system is on the verge of breaking down, and it could mean higher costs for homeowners
May 14th, 2018 – You’re soon going to have to pay a lot more to recycle, and the reason is simple supply-and-demand economics, with a healthy dash of international trade policy. It’s also because you probably don’t recycle properly. “Recycling as we know it isn’t working,” James Warner, chief executive of the Solid Waste Management Authority, told The Wall Street Journal. “There’s always been ups and downs in the market, but this is the biggest disruption that I can recall.” It all has to do with China’s once insatiable appetite for our recycled goods. The US ships much of its recycled material — plastic bottles, scrap paper, and cardboard — to feed China’s industrial boom.
If We Can’t Recycle it, Why Not Turn Our Plastic Waste Into Fuel?
May 14th, 2018 – Australia’s recycling crisis needs us to look into waste management options beyond just recycling and landfilling. Some of our waste, like paper or organic matter, can be composted. Some, like glass, metal and rigid plastics, can be recycled. But we have no immediate solution for non-recyclable plastic waste except landfill. At a meeting last month, federal and state environment ministers endorsed an ambitious target to make all Australian packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025. But the ministers also showed support for processes to turn our waste into energy, although they did not specifically discuss plastic waste as an energy source.
Government announces funding for infrastructure planning and green innovation in Canada
May 14th, 2018 – Investing in innovative municipal infrastructure projects contributes to a clean growth economy and strengthens the middle class by ensuring communities are healthy and sustainable places to live. The Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and Jenny Gerbasi, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) announced over CAD 3 million in funding for 50 new initiatives in communities across Canada through two programs: the Municipal Asset Management Program (MAMP) and the Green Municipal Fund (GMF).
Solving Canada’s food waste problem
May 10th, 2018 – When I was a child in Indonesia, I would always get the same advice from my mother and elders, “Tammara, finish every single grain of rice, if you don’t finish it the rice will cry.” The original story that inspired this saying, which I documented in my research, is titled “The Tale of the Crying Rice.” As the story goes, a farmer was out harvesting rice in her field. When she finished and was about to walk inside her home, she heard a crying sound. She looked all over her field and finally found that the source of the crying originated from a handful of unharvested rice left behind. The moral of the story is not that a rice will literally cry if you don’t eat it. Rather, wasting rice, even a single grain, means wasting all of the energy, water and the labour of the farmer. In a country like Indonesia where rice means life and survival, it is taboo to waste food.
Consumers may face higher costs when they recycle
May 14th, 2018 – “It’s not easy being green,” according to Kermit the Frog. These days, it’s not that cheap either. The old newspapers, cardboard boxes, and plastic bottles consumers thoughtfully place in recycling bins get turned into recycled materials, which helps pay the cost of collecting them. Consumers are told they are helping the environment by keeping these items out of the landfill. But The Wall Street Journal reports the market for these recycled materials has collapsed, so some jurisdictions across the U.S. have increased the cost to consumers who want to recycle. In some cases, these recyclables end up in a landfill anyway.
Singapore Installation Raises Awareness About Plastic Binge
May 11th, 2018 – Continuing its mission to raise awareness about the threat of plastic waste, Luzinterruptus, the anonymous Spanish art collective, created a large installation made from 20,000 plastic bottles collected from hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and other places of large consumption for the I Light Marina Bay festival in Singapore, which was held in March. The installation, Transistable Plastic, brought attention to plastic binge, an issue that the art collective always bears in mind when creating its installations. For the installation, Luzinterruptus prepared and vacuum packed the material that was used, creating hard solid panels to build seven mobile walls that hung from a structure under Esplanade Bridge, one of the busiest transit areas on the bay.
China Suspends All U.S. Scrap Imports for One Month
May 11th, 2018 – The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) announced that the U.S. operations of China Certification and Inspection Group North America (CCIC NA) has been suspended for one month (May 4 through June 4). This move comes on the heels of the country’s recently enacted waste import ban and contamination standard, which impacts a number of U.S. states, companies and individuals. ISRI shared in a statement that it was told the Chinese Government will accept shipments that were sent prior to May 3 with CCIC certificates, although they will be subject to 100 percent inspections and are not guaranteed entry.
Co-op launches reverse vending machines at UK summer festivals
May 11th, 2018 – Co-op will become the first UK retailer to launch a deposit return scheme (DRS) trial with reverse vending machines at four music festivals this summer. Working with Festival Republic, the reverse vending machines will be installed at Co-op pop up stores at Download, Latitude and Reading and Leeds festivals. Plastic bottles sold at the pop-up stores will have a mandatory deposit added to the price, with visitors able to return them to the reverse vending machine in exchange for a voucher to spend in the on-site stores. Bottles collected at each festival will then go on to be recycled to create bottles for Co-op’s own brand bottled water.
Read more on Recycle Waste World
Ontario’s new organic waste plan puts focus on composting in highrises
May 14th, 2018 – Toronto is hoping that new provincial rules will stop residents of the city’s apartment buildings, condos and other multi-residential buildings from throwing food scraps in the garbage. Almost half of Toronto residents live in condos, apartment buildings or co-operatives, but they recycle and compost much less than single-family homes. Highrise residents divert 27 per cent of their waste, compared to 65 per cent for those who live in houses. Ontario’s new Food and Organic Waste Framework looks to tackle that by changing building codes to require all highrises to have green bin infrastructure, as well as by eventually imposing an outright ban on any food scraps or other organics ending up in landfills.
Experts Weigh In On Taking Your Kitchen From Wasteful To Waste-Free
May 13th, 2018 – It’s easy to succumb to the greenwashing of eco-friendly packaging. Buzzwords like recycled, organic, compostable and recyclable convince us to buy additional products just because they say they’re better for the environment. But the central ethos of reducing our impacts and waste have to start with buying high-quality and long-lasting items, and end with nothing getting tossed out (even if it’s being thrown into a recycle bin).
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