November 2022 - Page 2 of 3 - Plastic Waste Solutions
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REDcycle Stops accepting soft plastic waste – AUSTRALIA
Posted on November 18, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingFollowing REDcycle’s temporary suspension of its soft plastic packaging collections, industry needs to come together to reinstate a scheme that has integrity and long-term economic viability. Importantly, this needs...
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Groups want EPA to limit PVA in laundry pods, seeing microplastic problems -USA
Posted on November 18, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsSource An environmental coalition and the green home products brand Blueland are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to limit PVA film used in billions of laundry and dishwasher pods each year, saying they contribute to microplastic pollution. Other studies have found...
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Is recycling the problem, not the solution? – Australia
Posted on November 15, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Economist Jason Murphy has a different take. Recycling plastic, he argues, is “kind of bullshit”. People are very worried about reducing landfill – but landfill size is only a minor environmental problem compared to reducing greenhouse emissions. With the...
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Queensland Containers for Change program to expand – Australia
Posted on November 14, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource The Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) has welcomed the Queensland Government’s review of the Containers for Change program, aimed at expanding eligible containers to include glass wine and spirit bottles. Good move by Queensland. Leading the other states.
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An Environmental Group Challenges a Proposed Plastics ‘Advanced Recycling’ Plant in Pennsylvania – USA
Posted on November 13, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Advanced recycling is a big part of what the chemical industry claims is an answer to a global plastics problem that the United Nations has described as a “triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.” But...
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A New Plant in Indiana Uses a Process Called ‘Pyrolysis’ to Recycle Plastic Waste. Critics Say It’s Really Just Incineration – USA
Posted on November 13, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource A lot of what comes into the plant gets lost in the process. In a document Brightmark filed in December with the EPA, the company acknowledged that just 20 percent of the plant’s output is its primary product—what it described...
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Pact’s billion bottle recycling project wins award -Australia
Posted on November 10, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource The facility, which commenced operations in February 2022, has the capacity to recycle the equivalent of around 1 billion 600ml PET plastic beverage bottles each year into high-quality food-grade resin. Cleanaway collects, sorts and delivers PET plastic waste from kerbside...
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Viruses can hitchhike on microplastics – Australia
Posted on November 10, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource Microplastics are not just tiny particles that can be ingested. They can also carry viruses, a University of Queensland study has revealed. “We found that viruses can hitchhike on microplastics and prolong their infectivity. It means there could be...
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Coles, Woolworths recycling scheme collapses after secret stockpiles revealed
Posted on November 8, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource Australia’s largest plastic bag recycling program has collapsed amid revelations hundreds of millions of bags and other soft plastic items dropped off by customers at Coles and Woolworths are being secretly stockpiled in warehouses and not recycled. Instead of being...
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‘It’s greenwash’: most home compostable plastics don’t work, says study – UK
Posted on November 4, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource Materials put into domestic compost are failing to disintegrate after six months – the only solution is to use less. “The bottom line is that home compostable plastics don’t work,” said Prof Mark Miodownik, an author of Continue reading this entry →

How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter?