Business model innovation accelerates circularity
For a circular future to become a reality, companies must redesign products and embrace new customer relationships with customers. That’s particularly true in apparel and electronics.
The technological evolution of materials recycling
Today's guest blog is authored by Jon Smieja of the GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.
Have you been to a materials recovery facility (MRF)? I’ve had the pleasure of touring a couple, and the thing that sticks out about my experiences thus far is not the high-tech sorting machinery.
In fact, because I haven’t spent enough time in a MRF to fully comprehend all the material movements, I would best describe it as something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine. Materials seem to be moving in every direction, crisscrossing, dropping off cliffs and moving up belts. When you break it all down, I know that it is nothing like a Rube Goldberg machine, but that’s the first thought that still comes to mind for me.
Because of the massive amount of material that flows through the average MRF and the very real implications of missing valuable materials in the sorting process, a whole industry of innovators has popped up over the last decade…
2023: New Laws, New Markets & Recycling’s Moral Halo
2022 was an odd year for recycling. Legislators were aggressive, but markets were cold. In spite of a surge of new laws, the very idea of recycling continued to be undermined by anti-plastics polemicists. Chaz Miller | Jan 13, 2023
Detoxifying chemistry for a circular future
Today's guest blog is authored by Jon Smieja of the GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.
3M made news in December, announcing it will end the manufacture of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (a.k.a. PFAS) by the end of 2025. For those of us who have been concerned about toxic chemistries common in everyday products, this is great news, even if decades late.
PFAS, commonly referred to as "forever chemicals" due to their stability in the environment, have long been under fire from environmentalists and human health advocates due to their potential for toxicity. Sustainability professionals and leading companies have been working toward elimination of these chemicals from products ranging from fast food wrappers to building products for more than a decade. The connection between 3M and PFAS has long been an issue here in my home state of Minnesota, where elevated levels of the…
Does EPR Increase Consumer Costs? Spoiler alert – Not as Much as Critics Say
From August 2022, a Recycling Partnership blog authored by Senior Policy Advisor Michael Washburn. The original post can be read here.
The U.S. recycling system is not one unified entity – it is a network of 9,000 separate local recycling programs. Recycling access, infrastructure and education have been underfunded for far too long, leaving many U.S. residents, more than 40 million, without convenient access to recycling. Better access, infrastructure, and education is required for an effective and efficient system. We need smart, well-designed policy to improve the U.S. residential recycling system, to get it working efficiently, and provide sustainable funding for the system so that it can continue to improve in the future.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation is a policy approach with far-reaching effects, including incentives to make packages sold on store shelves more recyclable, informing Americans about what…