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Environmental Justice Serves All

Today's guest blog is authored by Susan Robinson of NERC Advisory Member Waste Management. The original posting can be found here.

Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (U.S EPA)

Environmental Justice (EJ) may be one of the most talked-about topics in our industry in 2021.  Every organization that I belong to has created or is developing an EJ policy.  Federal and state legislation is being proposed – and passed – and regulators are recognizing the need to enforce existing laws carefully.  Companies are concerned about their ability to meet aggressive sustainability goals alongside new permitting restrictions, and they are concerned that…

APR Announces Positions on Key Recycling Issues

According to Resource Recycling, new position papers statements on chemical recycling, bottle bills, and mass balance methodology for postconsumer resin have been issued by the Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR)  that “cover topics that have taken center stage at industry events, dominated corporate press releases and fueled legislative debates.”

At NERC’s Fall 2019 Conference, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) described chemical recycling as “Leveraging chemistry to convert post-use plastics into valuable next generation products which extend the life of the plastic.” Now APR has weighed in on the controversial issue, stating that “chemical recycling has the potential to expand opportunities for recycling of materials that are not recycled by mechanical processes today, but that “[c]hemical recycling is not a replacement for mechanical or traditional recycling, but it is a compliment to these processes for materials that are rarely recycled mechanically.”

“Chemical…

The Return of Recycling Markets

Today's guest blog is authored by NERC board member Chaz Miller. It originally appeared on the Waste360 website.

Donnie Downer. That’s what I felt like for the last three years when speaking about markets at recycling conferences. The news was almost uniformly depressing. Following the Chinese government’s 2017 announcement about ending recyclable paper and plastic imports, markets went down and stayed down. The press went on an orgy of negative stories. We were told recycling was “broken” or worse.

Yet now, it seems the corpse has a lot of life in it. Markets for most recyclables have rebounded nicely. Best of all, prices for old corrugated containers and mixed paper are likely to continue to rise throughout…

2020: Year in Review

Today's guest blog is authored by Steve Alexander of NERC Advisory Member The Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR). The original post can be found here.

Success Despite Unprecedented Challenges: An Overview of the Past Year at APR

For many of us, last year's Plastics Recycling Conference was the final in-person event attended before the onset of COVID-19 and what proved to be a year full of challenges that no one could have predicted.

The distribution of vaccines brings us optimism for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we look forward to turning this corner, we are taking this time to reflect on some of the accomplishments that APR and our members was fortunate enough to achieve in the past year despite the odds we all faced.

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