Katherine Huded, The Recycling Partnership’s executive director of Material Systems. As more US states pass EPR legislation, PET thermoforming faces policy challenges, with some states labeling them “unrecyclable” due to a lack of end markets where the recycled materials can be turned into new products. However, with targeted investment, PET thermoforms have the potential to be added back to recycling lists as more US states roll out EPR, improving the material’s acceptance across the country, according to Katherine Huded, The Recycling Partnership’s executive director of Material Systems
The Recycling Partnership: Policy pressure mounts for PET thermoforms as US states enact EPR
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Can you build a house overnight? Can it be beautiful, stylish and sustainable? The answer is yes – as the thousands of visitors to Helsinki Design Week can testify! For the fourth edition of PEFC Wood Works, PEFC Finland teamed up with architect and environmental artist Marco Casagrande to showcase the future of living to the people of Helsinki. As cities become more densely populated, we must find more agile ways to build, and live in, new housing solutions. In the center of Helsinki, PEFC Wood Works x Tikku constructed a micro-size apartment house on just one parking slot in just one night. Tikku (‘stick’) is a demonstration of dense urban housing and Finnish wooden construction. Even better, all the wood used in the installation comes from sustainably managed, PEFC-certified, forests. Click Read More below for additional information.
Programs have been started by APP in the province of West Kalimantan in cooperation with the Belantara Foundation and IDH Sustainable Trade Initiatives, also involving several forest plantation companies on multi-stakeholder-based, responsible landscape management on the production forest in the Kubu-Ketapang landscape. In addition, in an effort to prevent peatland forest fires, APP and its suppliers have built more than 5,000 dams on the perimeter canals around its suppliers' plantation area in Indonesia. Of these, 500 dams which were built in West Kalimantan.
In addition to the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, APP outlined its support for an initiative by the Governor of West Kalimantan in developing renewable energy using the Kemiri Sunan plant (Reutealis trisperma (Blanco) Airy Shaw). Kemiri Sunan crop can be used as biodiesel and is a key part of the Government's efforts to reduce the dependence of Indonesia against imports of fuel. This pilot project will take the form of collaboration between West Kalimantan Forestry, APP, Tanjungpura University, and Belantara Foundation.
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute has concluded a comparative study on the environmental performance of different packaging solutions. The study compares the lifecycles of plastic products versus corresponding paper products from BillerudKorsnäs. The results show that paper has considerably more favorable environmental qualities than plastic, such as 50-70% lower greenhouse gas emissions.
IVL’s study looks at the entire product lifecycle, from material production up until it is thrown away or recycled. Although the transportation and packaging production of plastic products emits less greenhouse gas, the results show that the overall product lifecycle of paper products give rise to far less emissions. Material production of both paper and plastic packaging is the most energy intense part of production. But according to the study, which has been verified by Bureau Veritas, plastic production emits far more greenhouse gas than paper production.