Plastopedia

Steve Lee, the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s chief executive, said he was “disappointed to see the green economy so poorly supported” in George Osborne’s pronouncements.

“Waste and resource management has an essential role to play in delivering a sustainable, low carbon future, but the green economy got the cold shoulder from the Chancellor,” he added.

A leading recycler has warned of “black clouds on the horizon” for the plastics recycling industry.

Belgium-based Gemini Corporation chairman and chairman of the BIR Plastics Committee Surendra Borad fears that strict enforcement of import regulations by the Chinese authorities and the ban on shipments of plastics from Europe to Malaysia will have an impact on the European plastics trade.

He said that overall exports from Europe are “stagnating” while those from the USA fell 18 per cent in the second quarter of 2012. In India, he said the recent appreciation of the rupee has helped importers increase overseas buying activity but the market remains in “apathy” as bureaucrats fail to understand the significance of waste as a resource.

A British company that recycles 800,000 plastic bottles every hour is set to more than double its turnover this year, rising from £18.5 million  to £40 million.

Eco Plastics, which last year agreed a ten-year £200 million deal to recycle Coca-Cola bottles into new ones, making it the biggest plastic bottle recycler in Europe, says it has already increased capacity by  600 per cent in the past five years.

Plastic bag manufacturer Hilex Poly Co. LLC has been acquired by Wind Point Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, in a deal announced Nov. 2.

Wind Point purchased the Hartville-based company from TPG Growth, an arm of investment firm TPG Capital, for an undisclosed amount.

Hilex is the largest manufacturer of plastic bags in North America and runs the country’s largest plastic bag-recycling operation. The company makes a variety of bags and films for grocery, retail and good service operations, including bags with post-consumer recycled resin.

InterGroup International, a plastics recycling company based in Euclid, Ohio, has announced plans to invest $5 million to open a new facility in Jackson, Ga.

“More and more of our customers have located in the Southeast, and Jackson is a convenient location for us to do business with them,” says Neil Gloger, InterGroup’s CEO. “Butts County has a pro-business attitude and has shown us they wanted us to be here. Other locations we looked at didn’t show us the same hospitality as Butts County.”

Prior to the new facility opening, InterGroup used tolling arrangements to process its material.

Louisville has a new five-year solid waste management plan that calls for increased recycling, a ban on using plastic bags for yard waste, and new “pay as you throw” rates that would charge more for dumping more trash.

The Jefferson County solid waste board approved the plan Tuesday evening, and then began reviewing a proposed yard waste ordinance it hopes Metro Council approves. If not, board members said they have the authority to impose the ban, just as similar waste boards do for each Kentucky county.

The next big thing in fuel could come from repurposed plastic. However, only seven percent of plastic waste in the United States is recycled each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

A company in Niagara Falls, New York, is working to increase that percentage, with an eye toward reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Plastics recycler and resin manufacturer NextLife Enterprise LLC has opened a second reprocessing plant. But unlike its plant in Frankfort, Ky., this won't be devoted exclusively to plastics recycling.

The new $10 million plant in Rogers, Ark., will recycle plastics, metal, aluminum, glass and corrugated. Only about 20-25 percent of the material recycled at the 260,000 square foot plant will be plastics, said Ron Whaley, president and CEO of NextLife, which is headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla.

Don Herring takes recycling seriously. The Phoenix resident tries to follow city guidelines as he does his environmental duty, including rinsing out empty soup and dog-food cans before tossing them into the bin.

But until recently, Herring, 58, didn't realize the city doesn't recycle the plastic bags he has been including with his recyclables.

"I don't want plastic bags at landfills, and I know they take longer to break down," Herring said.

Recoup, the national charity for developing plastics recycling in the UK, has revealed that household bottle recycling in 2011 passed the 50 per cent milestone for the first time.

According to Recoup, around 306,000 tonnes (or 6.7 billion bottles) were recycled in 2011, pushing the recycling rate up to 52 per cent.

In order to help Slovenia’s disabled community, which purchases wheelchairs and other useful devices using funds gleaned from collecting and selling recyclable plastic packaging caps, leading recycler Interseroh Slovenia has created ‘the world’s largest mosaic built entirely out of plastic waste’.

A Europe-based plastics recycling association says it is supporting a recycling vision expressed by the European Union’s Environmental Commissioner Janez Potocnik.

The European Plastics Recyclers (EuPR) has released a statement saying the association and its members fully support the EU Commissioner regarding how to increase the amount of plastics collected for recycling. The EuPR says plastics recycling must be dominant over energy recovery and landfill banning. The plastics recycling industry is ready to invest and create new jobs, the EuPR says.

Like it or not, our petroleum-based economy won’t just go quietly into the night. Yet so much of it just ends up in the dump, like discarded plastic bits and old tires, which is why a company is recycling this old plastic and tire refuse into a usable oil lubricant that meets current standards and can be priced competitively.

United Kingdom: UK-based manufacturer Beacon Climbing Walls has designed a new product line for primary schools which is fun as well as sustainable.

Its new playground panels contain 100% recycled plastic bottles, carrier bags and film, supplied by recycler Centriforce. Made with a durable base, the rigid and rot-free panels have been transformed into low-level climbing tools specially developed for buildings with uneven surfaces. So far, two schools in Wales and one in London have been decorated externally with the colourful plastics.

The U.S. consumers recycled an additional 45 million pounds (20,412 tonnes) of plastic in 2011 compared to the previous year, a rise of 1.7% to reach over 2.6 billion pounds (1.18 million tones) for the year, according to figures released jointly today by the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

The recycling rate for plastic bottles held steady, inching up one-tenth of 1% to reach 28.9% for the year.

 NextLife Asset Recovery Services will open a new recycling facility and headquarters in Rogers, Ark.

The subsidiary of Boca Raton, Fla.-based NextLife Enterprise LLC said it will invest more than $10 million for a recycling facility to process post-consumer plastic into an environmentally sustainable resin for new consumer plastic products. The company has agreements with several organizations to supply the post-consumer plastic waste, according to a news release.

That is the damning conclusion of new research from European trade association PlasticsEurope which has examined current progress to date on recycling and recovery of waste plastics across the EU.

Back in 2009 the sector set itself the goal of reaching zero plastics to landfill by 2020, but the report states that unless there is a greater sense of stakeholder urgency, this will only be achieved by 2037. The UK in particular is performing badly with a total plastics recovery rate of just 27.3% - over 70% of this material is still landfilled, placing it in the bottom seven of the EU27+2 countries for diversion.

The plastics industry needs to work harder at turning waste into a valuable resource, be it through recycling or energy recovery, according to PlasticsEurope.

The latest data shows that with a business-as-usual approach, zero plastics to landfill would only be reached by the year 2037, said PlasticsEurope. Achieving the 2020 objective would prevent an estimated 80 million tonnes of plastic waste from going to landfill – an amount representing about 1 billion barrels of oil.