plastic waste News

COVID-19 has seen a reversal of attempts to minimize plastic waster. The coronavirus pandemic has seen large amounts of plastic used in face masks, testing kits, and screens. What is the current state of plastic waste?

A massive wave of trash has washed up on the beaches of Omoa in northern Honduras, leaving pristine tropical beaches blighted by piles of garbage. The trash, bobbing in the ocean and piled up on the beach, is mostly plastic refuse.

Canada's Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced the three winners of the Plastics Innovation Challenge on Wednesday. Each business will receive $1 million to develop technologies to address plastic waste from food packaging and construction.

A research group has developed an efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. The resulting gases can then be transformed back into new plastics - of the same quality as the original.

Inaccessible Island sits between Argentina and South Africa in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is described as a "remote, uninhabited island with a very high macro-debris load." Researchers wanted to find out where all the plastic waste was coming from.

Canadians are taught to recycle plastics - with the belief the waste plastic is being refashioned into something useful. CBC's Marketplace wanted to track the lifecycle of Canadian plastic, so they put trackers in plastic bales.

For the past year, the waste of the world has been gathering on the shores of south-east Asia. Containers full of unwanted waste have been accumulating in ports in Indonesia and Vietnam - while vast toxic wastelands of plastics cover parts of Malaysia.

An American diver broke the record for deepest submarine dive ever and found something disheartening at the bottom of the ocean — a plastic bag. Victor Vescovo traveled seven miles down to the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific

Toronto - Canadian efforts to reduce single-use plastic will get a boost this year when a major retailer is slated to launch a test of reusable packaging in the most populated part of the country.

At the annual World Economic Forum this week, consumer goods companies were in the hot seat, emerging as the new targets for global activism against plastic waste. CEO's of many of the companies have come up with a solution.

A 60-foot chunk of the Ocean Cleanup device, deployed with much fanfare in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in October, has broken off and the entire plastic collection system will now be towed back to port for an overhaul and upgrade.

A floating device sent to corral a swirling island of trash between California and Hawaii has not swept up any plastic waste — but the young innovator behind the project said Monday that a fix was in the works.

Unilever has signed a three-year partnership with Veolia to improve waste collection and recycling infrastructure while helping create a circular economy for plastic waste in India and Indonesia.

The world will soon be dealing with a glut of plastic waste equivalent to 21 times the mass of the Great Pyramids at Giza, with no obvious strategy available for recycling it.

London - Unilever announced on Wednesday it is partnering with start-up company Ioniqa and Indorama Ventures to develop technology capable of converting PET plastic waste into virgin-grade materials available for use in food packaging.

Oakville - Pyrowave, a Canadian company using microwaves to recycle polystyrene scrap was named by the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) as one of the country’s top 20 innovative technology companies.

New concerns have been raised about the impact of plastic waste dumped into the world’s oceans. A new report indicates that waste from Northern Europe, for example, will reach the Arctic within two years.

In an historic move this past week, the European Union approved a measure that would reduce the consumption of one-use plastic bags handed out in retail stores. The measure is expected to reduce the number of bags used by 75 percent over the next decade.