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For those of us who’ve worked in or with the waste industry for a while, it certainly feels like times are changing. A public obsession with single use plastics, rallying cries for better food waste segregation and management, and the emergence of the new agenda in town: the circular economy.

Led by Western Europe, increasing regulations and bans against plastic bags and other single-use plastic items such as drinking straws is driving growing demand for biodegradable plastics, according to new analysis from IHS Markit.

The reader survey of RECYCLING magazine will run until July 29.

The world creates a whopping 2.12 billion tonnes of waste annually, and it is estimated hat this will reach 4 billion tonnes by 2100. Though the world’s authorities are pushing out more legislation and acts to try and deal with the problem, there’s only so much within their power – the rest boils down to us, as a species, to work on.

China’s decision to stop importing recyclable plastic waste in January 2018 has left the world with little choice but to landfill recyclables for which no market now exists.

At the 23rd International Congress for Battery Recycling ICBR 2018, Prof. Kerstin Kuchta (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany) will be giving a summary of the battery market and the circular economy. Before the conference, she gave a number of interesting insights.

In light of the ENVI Committee’s upcoming vote on the Plastics Strategy on July 10, FEAD, the EU private waste and resource management industry, welcomes MEP Mark Demesmaeker’s draft own-initiative report. However, FEAD would like to highlight crucial points that need to be touched upon in order for the Plastics Strategy to be fully effective.

More collected material is needed to pave the way to increased recycling rates.

According to the BIR, reports from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, published on 24 June 2018, highlight that China plans to reduce its imports of solid waste to zero by the end of 2020.