plastics

A newly signed law in California, SB54, is set to reduce amounts of plastic waste, improve recycling rates, and place more responsibility on producers rather than consumers to curb plastic pollution. The new law requires a 25% decrease in single-use plastics entering the market over the next 10 years, and nearly half of that reduction […]

Scientists around the world are working to find an alternative to fossil-fuel based plastics that contribute to the climate crisis and persist in the environment, including the ocean.  In the latest attempt at a sustainable plastics alternative, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, or EPFL, have developed a plant-based plastic alternative that […]

The LEGO Group has announced plans to build a $1 billion dollar factory in Chesterfield County, Virginia, complete with a solar facility to power the factory. The company’s goal is for its first U.S. factory in over 16 years to be completely carbon neutral. “The location in Virginia allows us to build a solar park […]

Heinz is ready to move on from squeezable plastic bottles into the “Ketchup Bottle of Tomorrow” — a bottle made entirely of sustainably sourced wood pulp. The company announced its partnership with Pulpex to develop a paper bottle for Heinz ketchup. The new bottles will be paper-based, renewable, and recyclable and sourced from sustainable materials, […]

As food processing and packaging has become increasingly more complex, the question, “What’s in our food?” has become harder to answer. A team of international scientists has compiled a new database of 3,240 potentially harmful chemicals that have been measured in “food contact materials (FCMs),” like packaging and processing equipment, utensils and reusable food containers. […]

A new report shows that U.S. plastic recycling rates have declined from about 8.7% to between 5% and 6%, revealing the challenges and shortcomings of the country’s waste management infrastructure and policies. Environmental organizations Last Beach Clean Up and Beyond Plastics issued the report, which found a decline in recycling rates since 2018, the last […]

An international team of scientists wrote a letter to the journal Science recently asserting that recycling is not a long-term solution to the growing sea of plastics polluting our soil, river, oceans, the air we breathe and even our bloodstreams and lungs. The scientists argued that the production of plastics must not only be regulated, […]

Scientists have found a way to fight the climate crisis with plastic waste. A University of Rice research team discovered that heating plastic waste in the presence of a certain chemical created particles that had the ability to absorb carbon dioxide.