The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced grants of more than $100 million to expand the country’s recycling and waste management infrastructure. It is the largest investment in recycling by the EPA in three decades. Funding for the grants will come from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. Under the new funding opportunity, […]
With a rising interest among consumers for more sustainable products, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is in the review process as it considers updates to its Green Guides for the first time in over a decade. The updates are meant to address greenwashing and misinformation around recyclable and renewable product labeling. Although the Green […]
One of the greatest environmental challenges of the renewable energy transition is ensuring that the new energy-generating devices themselves — from solar panels to wind turbines to lithium batteries — are made and disposed of sustainably. That’s why it’s promising that recycled turbine blades are catching wind. Major turbine maker Siemens Gamesa announced Thursday that […]
Danish wind turbine maker Vestas has announced that it has developed a chemical mixture that breaks down wind turbine blades and allows them to be recycled. The solution could be used to break down discontinued blades, as well as blades that are already sitting in landfills. The chemical compound — developed with the help of […]
Zero-waste refers to principles of minimizing waste production as much as possible. Béa Johnson of Zero Waste Home calls the framework for zero-waste the 5 Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot.
Supermarkets Woolworths and Coles have been ordered by the New South Wales (NSW) Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to dispose of more than 5,732 tons of recycled soft plastics currently sitting in more than a dozen warehouses across NSW. The concern is that they’re being dangerously stored since the collapse of recycling organization REDcycle — a […]
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have revealed a new battery material, which they call the Quick-Release Binder, to make battery recycling easier and more affordable. While lithium-ion battery use is expected to grow elevenfold from 2020 to 2030, materials in these batteries, like lithium, cobalt and nickel, are in increasingly limited supply, […]
Oklo, a California-based energy startup, has submitted its licensing project plan for a commercial-scale nuclear fuel recycling facility to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The fuel recycling facility will be the first of its kind and is meant to make use of nuclear waste, which still has up to 90% of its energy content that […]
Researchers at the University of Cambridge announced Monday that they had developed the first-ever solar-powered system that could convert two types of waste into two different chemicals at the same time, in this case, carbon dioxide and plastics.