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What Helps People Better Understand Recycling Instructions?

This week's guest blog is courtesy of The Recycling Partnership. Its original publication can be found here.

Know What to Throw

When educating around what goes in – or doesn’t go in a recycling cart – messaging space is limited and attention spans are short. The Recycling Partnership recently set out to identify best practices for signage and mailers. We surveyed 1,173 people and interviewed 20 people across the country to get our questions answered. Here are our top findings:

1. People want details on what they should and shouldn’t recycle.

As we have seen in our other surveys, people are overly confident about recycling in general. They think they are recycling properly, but surveys (and contamination rates) confirm their knowledge is often wrong.

Case in point, 49% of those surveyed believed plastic grocery bags should go…

These 12 organizations are creating food products from upcycled food waste

Today's guest blog is authored by Sean Taylor, Contributing Editor of FoodTank. The post appeared on the website of GreenBiz.

Entrepreneurs are taking on food waste across the world in some truly creative ways — turning what many consider garbage into delicious — and nutritious — products. 

Their efforts are part of a growing trend to battle one of the world’s most pressing environmental and agricultural problems. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually across the globe — if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. 

But companies and nonprofit organizations around the world are working to reduce food waste by upcycling food and creating high quality, nutritive products.

As defined by the Upcycled Food Association (UFA), upcycled foods "use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to…

It’s Time for National Deposit Law

Today's guest blog is authored by NERC board member Chaz Miller. The original posting can be found here.

Container deposits are the third rail of recycling. You can love them or hate them, but few of us are indifferent. Whether you like them or not, it is hard to deny that they are an immensely effective way to collect bottles and cans for recycling.

Ten states currently require deposits on beverage containers. Most of them charge a nickel, but two require 10 cents. These ten states supply the bulk of our recycled aluminum cans, glass bottles and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

Deposit laws work for one simple reason: Consumers have a direct economic interest in recycling. Deposits are not hidden in the price of a product. They are out in the open for all to see. Consumers…

In My Opinion: Not all producer responsibility is created equal

Today's guest blog reprinted courtesy of Resource Recycling, was authored by Pierre BenabidèsSara-Emmanuelle Dubois and Peter Hargreave. The original post can be found here.

There is growing consensus that we have a major waste problem that needs to be solved. Declines in commodity markets and Asian market demands have significantly impacted the viability of many commercial and municipal recycling systems. The persistence of waste, especially plastic waste, is overwhelming citizens – whether it be directly through experiences in their own communities or international headlines about the impact waste is having on the natural environment. Public and industry polling is showing an increasing demand for change, and governments at all levels are responding.

There…

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