As sustainable materials management professionals, we understand the import role consumption plays in reducing impacts on our climate. 
If you've been to an in-person AOR event, you know that we prioritize low-carbon food by offering meals that are vegetarian and vegan forward. Why? Because what we put on our plates is just as important in reducing the effects of climate change as what we put in our shopping carts. 

Fiji has become the first nation in the Pacific to formally acknowledge “waste pickers” — who repurpose, resell, and recycle rubbish for a living — as the environmental champions that they are, and the positive environmental benefit of their work. 

Read the full article at Global Citizen.

Oregonians have partnered with the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC) to raise more than $125,508 in donated bottles and cans over the last three weeks to support Ukrainians in crisis through Oregon’s Bottle Bill.

A total of $75,508 came from residents donating OR 10-cent bottles and cans, and the rest was matched by the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC). The funds will go to Mercy Corps’ relief efforts on the ground in Ukraine. 

The aim of Food Waste Action Week (March 7-13, 2022) is to create lasting change that helps to deliver the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of halving global food waste by 2030. The global awareness campaign is led by Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in connection with their Love Food, Hate Waste campaign. The Action Week will highlight the connection between food waste and climate change, with the goal of engaging citizens to take action to reduce their own food waste.

Malaysia will return a container of plastic trash en route from the United States as it violates new U.N. rules governing hazardous waste, the environment ministry said, one of the first signs of the regulations being enforced. Two years ago, more than 180 countries agreed to ban hard-to-recycle plastic waste trade in an attempt to stop rich countries dumping trash in the developing world, where it often ends up polluting the local environment and the ocean.

Efforts to combat coronavirus spread have produced a plastics surge.

That ramped-up plastic production provides fresh impetus to proposals aimed at curbing how much of that material gets dumped into the environment.

Manufacturers have been working overtime to supply disposable personal protective equipment, takeout food containers and packaging required for all those home deliveries.

Officials in some areas last year also delayed or rolled back restrictions on single-use plastic bags.

Data shows that American exporters continue to ship plastic waste overseas, often to poorer countries, even though most of the world has agreed to not accept it.

When more than 180 nations agreed last year to place strict limits on exports of plastic waste from richer countries to poorer ones, the move was seen as a major victory in the fight against plastic pollution.

AOR member, Tigard, Oregon-based Agilyx Corp., which chemically recycles plastics into chemical intermediates, fuels and virgin-like plastics, has announced that it is leveraging its existing plastic feedstock management system to create a new subsidiary company Cyclyx International Inc. The new company will help to develop new supply chains that will aggregate and preprocess larger volumes of postuse plastics than current systems can support, Agilyx says.

A recycling plant in Tanzania’s port city of Dar es Salaam has traded paper for plastic bottles and started making anti-coronavirus face shields that are being snatched up by hospitals and health centres nationwide.

Continue reading at Reuters

Driven by the Covid-induced oil price plunge, factories in China are mixing cheaper virgin plastic with recycled plastic and selling it as 100 per cent post-consumer content. Brands with sustainability commitments need to be sure they're buying genuinely recycled material. But how?

Continue reading at Eco-Business