Yesterday I posted an item about California’s effort to recycle food scraps. Now, here’s a post about food composting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the city of Madison. In sum: it’s very challenging. Charlie Hildebrand and Riley Sumner write in Wisconsin Watch: “Before it was ultimately forced to shut down, UW-Madison’s composting program went…
Tag: recycling
Families Are Saving Food Scraps in California. Why?
California is gearing up to carry out its 2016 organics recycling law. Under that law, families must separate not just recyclables from trash, but food waste from recyclables—so it can be composted. They will be fined if they don’t do it by 2024. Some of the compost is sold to farmers. However, according to Gosia…
An Arkansas City Dumped Recyclables into a Landfill—and Pretended It Didn’t
A judge has ordered the city of Fort Smith, Arkansas, to pay nearly $750,000 in citizen restitution for dumping into a landfill 95 percent of the materials that residents thought would be recycled. The city deceived its residents, the decision said, by continuing to accept waste from recycling bins, using trucks that advertised themselves as…
Recycling Plastic Bottles: A Tangled, Costly Web
Major bottling companies like Pepsi-Cola and Coke are under pressure to produce more bottles out of recycled bottles, but recycled plastic bottles are increasingly scarce! As a result, recycled plastic is a more expensive raw material than virgin plastic. (The material used for bottles is polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.) The Wall Street Journal explains: “Recycled…
Update: Sweeping California Legislation Will Keep a Ban on Styrofoam Off the Ballot
July 2, 2022 Update: Governor Gavin Newsom signs what Waste Dive calls “the most ambitious extended producer responsibility bill for packaging in the U.S.” The California legislature is trying to head off a ban-polystyrene initiative this fall. It is crafting legislation that would require 20 percent of the state’s polystyrene (the lightweight plastic with the…