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In 1960, Americans generated 2.68 pounds of garbage per day and by 2017, it had grown to an average of 4.51 pounds. While many people dutifully put items into their recycling bins, much of it does not actually end up being recycled. There are several reasons why our recycling system isn’t working well: 40% of […]
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The people who flocked to Cocoa Beach in Florida last weekend left behind 13,000 pounds of litter, prompting the police to threaten a crackdown. Local officials believe that as social distancing and stay in place orders are loosened in parts of the state, there has been an influx of day-trippers who show up and leave […]
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Pointing to the rise in plastic being used during the COVID pandemic, an alliance of the nation’s largest chemical companies called the “Recover Coalition” is requesting that Congress give them $1b to deal with the current lack of a functioning recycling system in the U.S. The industry group, in a letter to legislators, explained that […]
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Researchers at Carbios, a French company, report in the Journal Nature that they’ve “engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials” and they are working to open a demonstration plant next year. The enzyme breaks down plastic all the way into a recyclable form — the company, in collaboration with Pepsi and L’Oréal, hopes to have market scale production within 5 years.
Why This Matters: 70 million tons of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is produced annually.
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by Zoey Shipley and Miro Korenha NPR and PBS Frontline recently announced a new joint investigation which has revealed that since the 1980s, “the plastics industry spent tens of millions of dollars promoting recycling through ads, recycling projects, and public relations, telling people plastic could be and should be recycled” all in an effort to […]
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Marin County, CA resident and former marketing consultant Carolyn Lund got fed up with all the waste she saw accumulating in her community as a result of Amazon deliveries. That’s why she set out to spearhead a local effort to get Amazon to pick up their used boxes. The Amazon to Reuse Boxes pilot program […]
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