February 2023 - Plastic Waste Solutions
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REDcycle insolvent, supermarkets to manage soft plastic waste – Australia
Posted on February 28, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource REDcycle has accepted the offer made by the big two supermarket chains to take responsibility for the 12,400 tonnes of soft plastic stored by REDcycle in warehouses around the country, ahead of being declared insolvent today. Coles and Woolworths made...
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‘Plastic-eating’ enzymes to help combat textile waste – UK
Posted on February 28, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Approximately 60% of clothes worn today are made of synthetic textiles and they are often sent to landfill or incinerated at end of life. Now, researchers at the University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Enzyme Innovation are using...
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The REDcycle crisis that never was – Australia
Posted on February 28, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Few events in waste have captured our attention in recent months like the disruption in REDcycle soft plastic collections. What the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and others have dubbed a ‘collapse’ has been also variously referred to as a...
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Ocean plastic: How tech is being used to clean up waste problem
Posted on February 27, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource Trying to solve the world's ocean plastic pollution problem has been a "long and painful journey" for Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat. The 28-year-old founder of non-profit environmental organisation The Ocean Cleanup has been working on ways to filter...
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REDcycle did the right thing by stockpiling- Australia
Posted on February 24, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Amidst all the media hyperventilating about the demise of REDcycle and the stockpiling of plastic, it is easy to think that all plastic recycling, and all recycling for that matter, is broken or worse still a fraud. It isn’t. Unfortunately,...
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US Plastics Pact will miss some 2025 targets – USA
Posted on February 23, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource With new data showing major brand companies in the U.S. Plastics Pact lagging their own targets for recycled content in plastic packaging, the head of the group said it likely it won't meet all its 2025 goals. The pact's latest...
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Deleting heavyweight plastic bags is great, but what are the alternatives? – Australia
Posted on February 23, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource The Boomerang Alliance is concerned that the alternatives now being proposed to the heavyweight plastic bags, so called ‘reusable’ or paper bags, are not the answer. Paper is another single-use, disposable product, and the ‘reusable’ bags currently available to...
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Is kerbside collection the dumping ground for FMCG packaging? – Australia
Posted on February 23, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource The proposal from the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) for a National Plastics Recycling Scheme (NPRS) is being met with considerable scepticism. The failure of industry to meet the national voluntary packaging targets hampers the credibility of...
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A solution to Australia’s soft plastics woes
Posted on February 21, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingSource Licella is a company that uses hydrothermal liquefaction, or HTL, an innovative form of advanced recycling. Licella’s HTL technology is called the Cat-HTR (which stands for Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor). This method of processing uses hot, pressurised water to recycle...
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Call for urgent overhaul of Australia’s monitoring of ‘astronomical’ plastic pollution – Australia
Posted on February 18, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsSource The Australian Academy of Science has called for an overhaul of the nation’s approach to studying plastic pollution, warning there is an over-reliance on volunteers and a lack of consistent data to document the “astronomical” problem. About three-quarters of rubbish...
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