(GUF) DRS - WHERE TO PUT THE MACHINES

Image inspiration (Man Ray) - link

Britain's Deposit Return Scheme hasn't even started yet, but there may already be a good reason to ask whether we're going to be putting the machines in the right places.

The UK scheme begins in October 2027. The principle is simple: buy a drink in an eligible plastic bottle or metal can, pay a deposit, return the empty container and get your money back. There's a great deal to like about it. Separately collecting PET bottles and aluminium cans should produce cleaner, higher-quality material, particularly for manufacturers wanting recycled material suitable for making new bottles.

Whether DRS is a good idea isn't really my question, it's where we expect people to return the containers. The British model is predominantly retailer based. Supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores and newsagents selling drinks within the scheme will generally have to provide return points unless exempt. Smaller urban shops below 100 square metres are already exempt, and there is industry speculation – although not confirmed Government policy – that the practical threshold could eventually rise further. If that happened, Britain's DRS could effectively become largely a supermarket return scheme and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Ireland demonstrates why. Lidl was an early adopter of its Deposit Return Scheme and subsequently installed two reverse vending machines at every store in the Republic. Within seven months of the national scheme beginning, Lidl had processed 100 million bottles and cans – almost one fifth of all containers returned nationally at the time. Ireland passed one billion returned drinks containers in February 2025, with the billionth returned at a Lidl store in Dublin. The supermarket model clearly works.

There are also sound commercial reasons for retailers to want this material. Lidl's parent, the Schwarz Group, which also owns environmental business PreZero, has increasingly developed circular material systems. A PET bottle returned cleanly through a reverse vending machine isn't simply rubbish somebody has handed back. Collect enough of them and you have a valuable industrial raw material - but something interesting is happening rather further away.

The experiment in Vietnam

Coca-Cola Vietnam has been experimenting with a broader collection network using reverse vending machines and community collection points. One particularly interesting result has come from Ho Chi Minh City's Metro system. After installing reverse vending machines at four Metro stations, Coca-Cola reportedly found collection volumes significantly higher than those achieved elsewhere. That doesn't prove Britain's approach is wrong. But it poses an interesting question about logistics.

The traditional retail model effectively asks: Where did you buy your drink? The Metro model asks: Where will you be when you've finished it?

And that distinction could matter enormously.

Someone buying a bottle of water at lunchtime probably has little intention of carrying the empty bottle back to a supermarket that evening. They may, however, walk through a railway station on their way home. Put the machine there and returning the bottle no longer requires a special journey. It becomes part of a journey they were making anyway and suddenly the potential network looks rather different: railway and underground stations, universities, shopping centres, airports, stadiums, large workplaces and service stations.

Perhaps the most logical measurement when deciding where to install a reverse vending machine isn't the number of square metres inside the building. It's the number of people walking past the machine?

None of this means supermarkets disappear. Ireland proves they can process enormous quantities of material. They have space, staff, established logistics and customers who regularly return but perhaps they should be only part of the network. Britain's regulations already allow organisations outside conventional grocery retail – including schools, gyms, sports centres and community organisations to establish voluntary return points. That means the network could eventually evolve towards the places where people actually return the most containers and that's what makes the Vietnamese experiment interesting.

Coca-Cola hasn't invented a revolutionary recycling technology. What's changing is the thinking about where to put the machine. There's an important difference between designing a recycling system around the organisations selling the product and designing one around the behaviour of the person eventually disposing of the packaging. The first is administratively logical; the second might simply be more convenient and convenience matters as Britain is not starting from zero. Before DRS, around 76% of PET drinks bottles and 71% of aluminium and steel drinks cans were already being collected for recycling. The DRS target is 90%.

With roughly 12 billion PET bottles and 13 billion cans placed on the market annually, reaching 90% means capturing, very approximately, another four billion containers a year that currently escape recycling which raises perhaps the most important question - where are those missing containers?

Britain still has more than a year before DRS begins. Nobody yet knows exactly how consumers will behave or which return points will handle the greatest volumes.
Perhaps Ireland and Vietnam are showing us two halves of the answer.

Supermarkets demonstrate that reverse vending can work at enormous scale. Vietnam suggests that convenience and footfall may determine where it works best.

The deposit may be exactly the right idea – the machine may simply be in the wrong place and that leaves one question worth asking before Britain installs thousands of them: Are we designing DRS around where people buy their drinks or where they actually finish them? More like this (Deposit Return Schemes) - link - more like this (Vietnam) - link

(GUF) CHINA OPENS TO RECYCLED PLASTIC (AGAIN)

Image inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link

In 2017 China changed the global recycling industry almost overnight. Its National Sword policy effectively closed the country's doors to imported plastic waste after years of accepting enormous quantities from Europe, Britain, the United States and elsewhere. At the time, there was considerable anger and consternation throughout the Western waste and recycling industry. Suddenly there was nowhere for millions of tonnes of supposedly recyclable plastic to go.

China had a valid point. For years, wealthy countries had been shipping enormous quantities of poorly sorted, contaminated and often unrecyclable plastic and other crap halfway around the world and happily recording it as recycling. China was left to separate the useful material from everybody else's rubbish and deal with the environmental consequences.

National Sword essentially said enough but nine years later something interesting is happening. Under China's new 15th five year Circular Economy Development Plan, Beijing intends to expand the import and use of high-quality recycled raw materials from overseas. China wants recycled plastic back but there's an important distinction. China is not reopening its borders to the contaminated plastic waste it rejected in 2017. Imported solid waste remains prohibited. What China increasingly wants is plastic that has already been properly sorted, processed and transformed into a consistent secondary raw material suitable for manufacturing. Existing Chinese standards already recognise products such as recycled plastic pellets and PET flakes, while the new plan proposes widening the range of qualifying recycled materials.

In essence, China still doesn't want our rubbish. It may increasingly want to buy the useful material we manufacture from it and the reason why is the most interesting part of the story. National Sword successfully reduced the environmental problems associated with importing other countries' waste but it couldn't eliminate China's enormous demand for plastic. Without imported recycled feedstock and without sufficiently strong policies requiring manufacturers to use recycled material, the market did something remarkably predictable - it turned to virgin plastic.

China's imports of primary plastic increased from around 29.7 million tonnes in 2017 to 40.9 million tonnes in 2020. China then dramatically expanded its own petrochemical industry with self sufficiency in synthetic resins reportedly reaching around 90% by 2024. In effect, China stopped importing much of the world's discarded plastic but continued consuming mountains of plastic. Increasingly, it simply made virgin material itself.

That in itself is not necessarily evidence that National Sword was wrong. It demonstrates something more important. Restricting the supply of recycled material does not automatically create a circular economy. There also has to be demand for recycled material, and China appears to have learned that lesson.

Its latest circular economy plans include an ambition to produce more than 19.5 million tonnes of recycled plastic annually by 2030 while improving access to high-quality overseas recycled feedstock. China is also the world's largest manufacturer and exporter of plastic goods, increasingly selling into markets where recycled-content requirements are becoming more demanding.

What's happening in China isn't simply environmental policy, it's industrial policy, resource security and economics, and this is where the move becomes particularly relevant for Europe. While China is considering how to make it easier for high quality recycled materials to enter the country, the European Union is moving in almost the opposite direction. From November 2026, the EU will prohibit exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries.

I can imagine policymakers in Brussels glancing towards Beijing and wondering whether they have missed something?

The two policies are not directly contradictory. Europe wants to stop environmental problems being exported and encourage more plastic to be recycled within Europe. China still doesn't want imported waste either, but the contrast raises a question.

China has spent nine years discovering that restricting the movement of recyclable plastic without simultaneously creating sufficient demand for recycled material can strengthen the position of virgin plastic. Is Europe in danger of conducting a similar experiment?

Britain is no longer part of the European Union and is therefore not directly subject to its new waste shipment regulation, but Britain nevertheless remains subject to strict international and domestic controls governing waste exports and nobody should seriously advocate returning to the days of shipping contaminated mixed-plastic bales around the world and calling it recycling but if British waste plastic can be sorted, washed and processed into a consistent, specification-grade secondary raw material that a manufacturer in China genuinely wants to purchase, that is a very different proposition.

This, in my opinion, also exposes a weakness in the way we sometimes think about recycling in Britain. For years, enormous emphasis has been placed on collection. We measure recycling rates, introduce additional collection requirements, tell households which bin to use and congratulate ourselves when another material is added to the recycling system but collecting something doesn't create a circular economy. Somebody ultimately has to want the material that comes out the other end.

Our recent experience with flexible plastics demonstrates exactly that problem. Collecting increasingly complicated mixtures of polymers is relatively easy compared with consistently turning them into secondary materials capable of competing technically and economically with virgin polymer and maybe China's experience provides a useful lesson.

In 2017 China was entirely justified in telling the world that it would no longer be its dumping ground. Nine years later it appears equally willing to recognise that refusing rubbish and importing valuable recycled resources are not the same thing.

There's no shame in changing policy when the evidence changes. If anything, China's willingness to learn, adapt and amend its approach deserves some credit. The more uncomfortable question may be whether Britain and Europe are prepared to learn from China's experiment too.

Perhaps we should spend slightly less time asking how much plastic we collect for recycling and rather more time asking a much harder question of after we've collected it, have we actually made something anybody wants to buy? More like this (China) - link - more like this (recycled plastic) - link - more like this (rubbish) - link

(GUF) TRAY, TRAY AND TRAY AGAIN

Image inspiration - Man Ray - link

Emirates recently announced that it had recycled more than 88 tonnes of redundant plastic meal trays, bowls and dishes from its Economy Class service over the past year. It's an impressive number, but perhaps the more interesting story isn't the airline, it's the company taking the old trays away and bringing them back.

Belgian headquartered deSter designs and manufactures food service products for more than 80 airlines worldwide. Increasingly, however, it isn't simply designing the product, it's trying to design what happens to it at the end of its useful life and that's where this becomes interesting from a waste management perspective.

The elephant in the departure lounge

Before getting too enthusiastic, there's an obvious point to acknowledge. Aviation is hardly an environmental poster child. Commercial aircraft consume enormous quantities of fuel, generate significant greenhouse gas emissions and aviation remains one of the more difficult sectors of the global economy to decarbonise. Recycling a meal tray doesn't cancel any of that out, nor should an airline be considered environmentally sustainable simply because somebody has found a better way of dealing with its crockery but that would be missing the point.

An industry's wider environmental impact isn't an argument for ignoring the impacts it can reduce. If humans are going to continue flying and every indication suggests that we are – repeatedly reusing products and recovering their constituent materials at end-of-life is surely preferable to continually manufacturing replacements from virgin resources.

Aviation's environmental footprint is an argument for doing more, not an argument for dismissing the things it gets right and in this particular case, something is being done exceptionally well.

Recycling isn't necessarily circular

Industry has become very comfortable, perhaps even complacent with the idea of recycling. Put something in the correct container, send it to a recycling facility and receive a report stating that it's been recycled - job done - except, of course, that isn't necessarily a circular economy.

Successful recycling ultimately requires three things: a recoverable and sufficiently consistent material, viable reprocessing and somebody willing to buy and use the resulting secondary raw material.

deSter's approach attempts to connect all three. Its reusable airline serviceware can reportedly withstand at least 150 uses and then only when an item becomes damaged or otherwise unserviceable does the recycling stage begin. The redundant products are collected, washed and inspected before being ground into material that can then be incorporated into new serviceware with those replacement products being supplied back to the airline - tray becomes tray - bowl becomes bowl.

The customer consuming the product effectively becomes the supplier of raw material for its replacement which is a considerably more interesting proposition than simply saying something is recyclable and it's harder than it sounds because these aren't old plastic trays being turned into traffic cones or park benches, they're being returned to food contact applications and that requires considerably greater control over material provenance, contamination, traceability and processing.

deSter began developing its aviation closed-loop system around 2018 and in 2021 announced approval from the European Food Safety Authority for its food-contact closed-loop recycling process. Its reusable product range includes polypropylene (PP), bio-PP and PET, although the precise polymer used varies between individual products and airline programmes. Replacement products typically contain around 25% recycled material, meaning virgin polymer is still required which is worth acknowledging as this isn't an infinitely self-sustaining loop in which yesterday's tray becomes 100% of tomorrow's tray.

Material performance, food-contact requirements and manufacturing specifications impose limitations - the important development is that recovered material is being deliberately specified as feedstock for replacement products.

Emirates provides an excellent demonstration of scale. Its closed loop programme, launched in 2023 and now reportedly recovers damaged Economy Class trays, casseroles, snack dishes and bowls for processing in Dubai. More than 88,000 kilograms were repurposed during the reported year, with new products containing up to 25% recycled material, but Emirates is only part of the story; KLM was working with deSter on closed-loop airline catering products as far back as 2019; Cathay Pacific has reported returning more than 47,000 damaged or substandard Economy Class trays, which were broken down, processed and injection-moulded into new trays containing approximately 25% recycled material; Etihad introduced a reusable Economy Class dining system designed so that trays, dishes, bowls, lids and platters can eventually be recovered, ground and incorporated into replacement products; TAP Air Portugal introduced similar reusable closed-loop tableware on long-haul Economy services, reportedly on a cost-neutral basis.

deSter's sustainability reporting has identified five airlines across three continents participating in its established closed-loop programmes: Emirates, Etihad, KLM, Cathay Pacific and TAP Air Portugal, others are beginning to design products around similar principles.

Keeping the loop local

Sending redundant plastic thousands of miles around the world simply to recycle it would rather undermine the exercise; deSter therefore operates manufacturing and processing infrastructure across several regions. Its European closed loop activity has centred on its manufacturing operation in Hoogstraten, Belgium, while Asian material can be handled through its operation in Prachinburi, Thailand. For Emirates, redundant serviceware is processed locally in Dubai, with deSter operating from the Jebel Ali area.

This geographical element matters. Circularity isn't simply about where a material eventually ends up. Transport, handling and processing are part of its environmental footprint too. A genuinely effective loop should therefore be as short geographically as it is circular materially.

Five airlines down. Quite a few to go.

And this is where praise needs to turn into a question. deSter says it supplies more than 80 airlines worldwide but its published sustainability reporting identifies only five airline partners operating established closed loop recycling programmes. Meanwhile, IATA's global statistical collection draws information from more than 1,300 airlines.

Those figures aren't directly comparable; deSter is only one supplier and airlines vary enormously in size and operation so it would be misleading of me to suggest that only a tiny percentage of aviation uses closed loop serviceware but they do illustrate the size of the opportunity because deSter and its airline partners have already answered several important questions.

Why isn't it being done much more widely?

Perhaps the bin is where we've been going wrong. Throughout all of my time in the industry, waste management has concentrated on what happens after somebody decides something is waste. We manufacture a product, sell it, use it and eventually throw it away and only then do we ask - what can we do with this?

Closed-loop thinking reverses that sequence. Before manufacturing the product, ask: what will happen when the customer has finished with it? Even better - how do we make sure we get the material back?

Airlines actually provide an unusually good environment in which to answer these questions.

Unlike takeaway packaging disappearing into millions of homes and workplaces, airline serviceware operates within a relatively controlled system. The airline specifies it initially, the catering operation supplies it, the passenger uses it, cabin crew collect it and then the catering operation receives it back. The material never completely escapes the supply chain and once you'e recognised that, designing a recovery loop becomes considerably more achievable.

The challenge now is to make the exception considerably less exceptional because perhaps the best recycling system isn't the one that finds somewhere for our waste to go, it's the one that already knows how it's coming back. deSter - link - more like this (aviation) - link - more like this (Emirates) - link - more like this (sustainable aviation) - link - more like this (KLM) - link - more like this (plastic recycling) - link

(GUF) COMPOSTING HUMANS

Image inspiration - René Magritte - link

Earth Funeral has recently opened what it describes as the first human composting facility on the US East Coast. Located in Maryland, the facility uses a process known rather more elegantly as Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), in which human remains are placed inside individual vessels with organic bulking materials and subjected to controlled aerobic decomposition.

Temperature, moisture, oxygen and airflow are managed to encourage microbial activity in much the same way as other controlled composting processes. Maryland regulations require the material within the vessel to reach at least 55°C for 72 consecutive hours as part of the pathogen reduction process with 'transformation' taking up to 45 days. There are currently fewer vessels installed but the facility is ultimately designed to accommodate 126, with a projected capacity of around 2,000 people each year.

Strange though the concept may initially sound, there's a serious environmental argument behind it. Traditional burial requires land and can involve coffins, embalming chemicals and maintained cemetery infrastructure. Cremation avoids many of those issues but requires considerable energy and produces carbon emissions. Natural Organic Reduction offers another option: controlled biological decomposition returning the organic material to soil.

It's easy to cringe at the idea but strip away our cultural relationship with death and the underlying biological principle is hardly revolutionary. Human beings are organic matter and decomposition happens eventually regardless of what funeral arrangements we make. NOR simply controls and accelerates that process.

Environmental claims do, however, deserve scrutiny. Earth describes its process as having zero net CO₂ emissions, largely because its vessels operate using renewable electricity and because carbon released through decomposition is regarded as part of the short-term biogenic carbon cycle rather than additional fossil carbon. That doesn't mean the process produces no emissions. Earth's own scientific information acknowledges that approximately 30–40% of the organic carbon in the body is converted to carbon dioxide through microbial respiration during decomposition.

An independent comparative life cycle assessment undertaken for Dutch funeral organisation DELA estimated the climate impact of human composting at approximately 47 kg CO₂e per person which placed it almost alongside electric cremation at 45 kg CO₂e and natural burial at 40 kg CO₂e, although substantially below gas cremation at 181 kg CO₂e. NOR may therefore represent a comparatively low-carbon option, but perhaps not quite the environmental miracle some headlines suggest. Maryland has specifically created a regulatory framework for Natural Organic Reduction as a method for the final disposition of human remains. Earth isn't operating a conventional waste management or composting facility and the deceased aren't classified as waste. Operationally, however, things begin to look remarkably familiar to anyone who has spent time around biological waste treatment facilities.

There are acceptance criteria, prohibited inputs, controlled treatment vessels, organic bulking agents, defined residence periods, temperature requirements, moisture controls, pathogen controls, odour controls, record keeping and restrictions governing the resulting material. The facility must even operate under a formal Reduction Facility Operations Plan covering the movement of material through receipt, active reduction, curing and storage.

Maryland regulations prohibit NOR where somebody is known or reasonably suspected to have certain conditions, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or another prion disease, Ebola or tuberculosis. Certain radioactive treatments can also prevent acceptance. Battery-powered implanted devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators must be removed, with operators required to check remains using a hand magnet or metal-detection equipment.

Legally, it isn't waste treatment. Operationally, however, an awful lot of it would be instantly recognisable to somebody auditing a biological treatment facility. Once the process has been successfully completed, the legal status changes. What entered the vessel as human remains emerges as what Maryland legislation describes as soil remains. Earth says each person produces approximately 113 kg of soil like material. For an individual family this creates a rather beautiful proposition - take the soil home, plant a tree, establish a memorial garden, scatter it somewhere meaningful (with the landowner's permission) and the person quite literally contributes to new life.

However, multiply the numbers - at Earth's projected Maryland capacity, 2,000 people × 113 kg produces approximately 226 tonnes of material every year and the question inevitably arises: where does it all go?

Maryland places significant restrictions on NOR soil. It cannot be sold or resold, incorporated into commercial compost, used to grow food intended for humans or livestock or simply placed on somebody else's land without permission. Perfectly sensible safeguards but those restrictions also remove several of the obvious large-scale markets normally available to recovered organic material.

Earth allows families to take soil remains and says material families don't want can be donated for uses including tree planting, habitat restoration and conservation projects. At current volumes that may provide an entirely satisfactory solution but what happens if human composting succeeds and scales up? One facility producing around 226 tonnes annually may be manageable - ten facilities could produce more than 2,000 tonnes. If 100,000 people eventually chose NOR nationally, the process could potentially create around 11,300 tonnes of material every year and at that point, planting a memorial rose stops being an end-market strategy and this is where human composting encounters exactly the same fundamental challenge conventional recycling has faced for decades.

Producing a recoverable material does not automatically create a circular economy. For a circular system to work, somebody ultimately has to have a genuine, sustainable and lawful use for what comes out of the other end. Human composting therefore presents an unusual paradox. Its environmental proposition is partly based upon producing useful soil rather than consuming energy through cremation or occupying land through conventional burial. But the more successful the process becomes, the more soil it produces and the more important reliable outlets for that soil become. A few kilograms kept by a grieving family has enormous sentimental value. Hundreds or thousands of tonnes require an end market.

None of this means human composting is a bad idea — quite the opposite. The technology is fascinating, the regulatory framework developing around it is surprisingly sophisticated and there is a perfectly credible argument that controlled biological decomposition could become another legitimate alternative to burial and cremation.

A facility capable of treating 2,000 people annually has throughput, capacity, emissions, storage requirements, process controls and outputs. Those things don't disappear because the material entering the vessel has a name rather than a waste code. Perhaps Natural Organic Reduction will prove to be one of the more environmentally sustainable ways of dealing with the unavoidable reality of death but sustainability cannot be judged solely by what happens to the person entering the vessel. We also have to ask what happens to everything leaving it. Earth Funeral - link - More like this (composting) - link - more like this (Maryland) - link

(GUF) ABU DHABI EXPANDS NASEEJ

Image inspiration René Magritte - link

The UAE discards around 220,000 tonnes of textiles every year and an estimated 88% currently goes to landfill. A new national initiative intends to change that, but its success may ultimately depend upon something considerably harder to engineer than a recycling plant: good old human behaviour.

Abu Dhabi has announced another significant expansion of Naseej, the UAE’s National Initiative for Textile Circularity, with 14 new strategic agreements taking its network to more than 35 organisations.

On the face of it, this could easily become another familiar sustainability story: agreements are signed, photographs are taken and an impressive collection of corporate logos appears beneath a circular-economy banner. But Naseej deserves a closer look.

Naseej estimates that around 500 million textile pieces are consumed annually in the UAE. Against that scale of consumption, the challenge is not simply to collect more discarded clothing, but to create the infrastructure, markets and consumer appetite; capable of keeping those materials in circulation. The UAE isn't fine tuning an established circular textile economy; it is attempting to build one.

Europe is tackling much the same problem through increasingly strong regulation. Under legislation stemming from its circular-economy strategy, separate textile collection is mandatory across EU Member States and Extended Producer Responsibility will increasingly make producers responsible for financing collection, sorting, reuse and recycling. Alongside this sit ecodesign requirements, greater product information, Digital Product Passports and measures addressing textile waste and unsold goods.

Europe is, in effect, attempting to regulate circularity into existence whereas the UAE appears, at least initially, to be approaching the problem differently. Rather than beginning with a long list of obligations, Naseej is assembling the organisations required to make the system work, with it's partners spanning government, retail, property, healthcare, logistics, technology, recycling, academia and the charitable sector.

That matters because textile circularity requires considerably more than somewhere to put unwanted clothes. It requires collection, sorting, reuse markets, recycling technology, manufacturers prepared to use recovered fibres and ultimately consumers willing to buy the resulting products. Naseej therefore poses the question: can you build a circular economy before you regulate one?

Collecting textiles does not automatically make them circular. A discarded shirt collected in Abu Dhabi and subsequently exported for reuse may represent a better outcome than landfill but it hasn't necessarily created a UAE circular textile economy.

Similarly, turning clothing into insulation or cleaning cloths may represent worthwhile recovery but the material has effectively left the textile loop. The far bigger prize is textile-to-textile recycling where old garments become new garments - and that's much harder.

Modern clothing can contain complex combinations of natural and synthetic fibres, elastane (spandex/lycra), dyes, coatings, buttons and zips. Recovering fibres of sufficient quality and at a competitive price remains a significant international challenge. Naseej cannot therefore be described as a closed-loop system; but rather an attempt to assemble the pieces from which one might eventually be built.
Possibly the most interesting part of the experiment is that someone then has to actually want the finished product, and research suggests UAE consumers are actually receptive to sustainability. Previous surveys have found strong stated willingness to pay more for goods made from recycled or environmentally preferable materials, while public reaction to Naseej's Fabric of Possibility campaign at Yas Mall was encouraging, but what consumers say about sustainability and what they actually buy are not necessarily the same thing.

The UAE makes this particularly interesting because it combines considerable consumer wealth with a substantial premium and luxury retail market. To the money paying UAE citizen, does 'made using recycled textile fibre' add value because it represents sustainability, technology and modern manufacturing or does recycled still suggest something previously used or somehow inferior? A recycled-fibre garment is not necessarily a second-hand garment; the material can be recovered, processed and manufactured into an entirely new product and that distinction could prove crucial.

Governments can mandate collection; businesses can provide containers; recyclers can recover fibre and manufacturers can make new products but ultimately somebody still has to buy them.

Naseej is too young to judge by results but eventually the questions should be simple. Does that 88% landfill rate fall? How much collected material is genuinely reused or recycled, how much recovered fibre returns to textile manufacture and, crucially, do consumers actually buy the products made from it?

Europe is constructing a regulatory framework intended to make textile producers responsible for circularity. The UAE is initially attempting to bring government, industry, technology and consumers together around the same objective. Perhaps the successful model will ultimately require elements of both because whichever route is chosen, both eventually arrive at exactly the same place. More like this (textile recycling) - link - more like this (UAE) - link

(GUF) CASABLANCA - HERE'S LOOKING AT EFW

Image inspiration - René Magritte - link

Every so often, a waste infrastructure announcement deserves considerably more attention than the number of tonnes it will process. The newly announced Casablanca Solid Waste Treatment and Valorisation Project is definitely one of them.

Kanadevia Inova (built The Slough Multifuel facility) working in partnership with Moroccan energy company Nareva and Japanese trading group Itochu, has signed a 33.5-year concession agreement with the Municipality of Casablanca for what will become Morocco’s first major integrated waste-to-energy infrastructure project.

The headline numbers are extraordinary. The proposed facility will process approximately 1.5 million tonnes of municipal waste every year. For those familiar with the UK waste industry, the sheer scale of the Casablanca project is perhaps best understood by comparing it with Viridor’s Energy Recovery Facility at Ardley in Oxfordshire. Ardley is itself a substantial facility, capable of processing approximately 378,000 tonnes of residual waste each year. Casablanca is expected to process 1.5 million tonnes annually – almost exactly four times Ardley’s capacity.

Its proposed 126 MW of waste-to-energy generation is also approaching five times Ardley’s generating capability and that's before Casablanca’s additional 50 MW of solar PV and 4 MW of landfill-gas generation are even considered. Put another way, the equivalent of four Ardley sized Energy Recovery Facilities combined into one development, then add a major solar installation and landfill-gas recovery system alongside them. That begins to convey the extraordinary scale of what is being proposed. Casablanca should therefore not simply be regarded as a large waste-to-energy project by African standards; it is a major international scale energy and waste infrastructure development being constructed in Africa.

The investment, likewise is vast. Approximately US$1.5 billion. Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year (2026), subject to completion of financing, with full operation targeted for 2030.

But perhaps the most interesting number isn't 126 MW, 1.5 million tonnes or even $1.5 billion; it's 33.5 years. This isn't simply an incinerator; the concession period tells us something about how Morocco is approaching the project. This is being treated as long-term national and municipal infrastructure.

Located alongside the existing Mediouna landfill, the development combines treatment of Casablanca's future municipal waste with recovery of energy from existing landfill gas and substantial solar generation. Electricity off take arrangements with SRM Casablanca-Settat and Morocco's national electricity and water utility ONEE provide another important piece of the model, essentially bringing several traditionally separate problems together: waste disposal, landfill dependency, renewable and recovered energy, electricity demand, urban growth and carbon reduction.

The consortium expects the project to recover value from approximately 80% of Casablanca's municipal waste through treatment, material and energy recovery, substantially reducing the amount requiring landfill disposal. That alone would represent a profound change in the way one of Africa's major cities manages its resources but the implications could stretch far beyond Morocco.

Africa has an enormous waste problem and an enormous opportunity. It's urbanising rapidly and with growing cities, consumption is increasing and municipal waste generation is rising accordingly but across much of the continent waste infrastructure has struggled to keep pace. Collection remains incomplete in many regions; open dumping remains widespread; modern sanitary landfill capacity is unevenly distributed while sophisticated treatment and resource recovery infrastructure remains relatively uncommon.

At the same time, electricity demand is growing; waste and energy supply have traditionally been treated as separate infrastructure challenges and Casablanca suggests that they don't necessarily have to be. Waste that previously represented an environmental liability can simultaneously become part of an urban energy system.

Large thermal waste-to-energy plants remain remarkably rare in Africa. The best known example is the Reppie facility in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, opened in 2018 and designed to process approximately 1,400 tonnes of waste per day with generating capacity of around 25 MW. Casablanca is in another category. At approximately 1.5 million tonnes annually, it represents more than 4,000 tonnes of municipal waste every day. Its proposed 126 MW thermal WtE capacity is around five times that of Reppie and that's before its 50 MW of solar and 4 MW of landfill-gas generation are considered.

This is no demonstration plant or a small technology trial, It's major metropolitan infrastructure and most importantly, international companies and municipal and energy authorities are prepared to structure it over more than three decades. The biggest obstacle to large scale waste-to-energy development across Africa has never simply been technology. Modern EfW technology is well established. The harder problem is making the economics work. A billion dollar plant needs confidence that waste will arrive tomorrow, next year and twenty years from now. It needs reliable collection, sufficient feedstock, predictable revenues and somebody prepared to buy the generated electricity. It needs municipalities capable of entering long-term agreements and it needs investors prepared to commit enormous amounts of capital and Casablanca appears to bring several of those pieces together.

The municipality provides the long-term waste concession. The city provides an enormous waste stream. Energy off-take arrangements provide a market for the electricity. International technology and investment partners provide expertise and capital and the 33.5-year concession provides the timescale necessary to make major infrastructure investment possible.

Most importantly, this technology allows developing economies to leapfrog infrastructure generations. Large parts of Africa did not build Europe's enormous fixed line telephone networks before adopting mobile communications; they effectively skipped a technological generation and this level of waste infrastructure may present a similar opportunity.

Waste-to-energy is not a magic answer to Africa's waste problem. It requires effective emissions controls, competent regulation, reliable waste collection, appropriate waste composition, responsible management of residues and protection of recycling systems.

Nor should recyclable materials simply be burnt because an incinerator requires feedstock. Africa also has enormous potential for composting and anaerobic digestion because municipal waste in many regions contains a high proportion of organic material.

This Casablanca project should be celebrated by the city, the country, the continent of Africa and the global waste industry as it represents so much more than burning rubbish. More like this (energy from waste) - link - more like this (Morocco) - link - more like this (Africa) - link 

(MOR) DATABEYOND - BEST INVENTIONS - REUSE & RECYCLE

Picture - link

While the world's AI giants battle for faster chips and greater computing power, a Chinese startup dedicated to smarter waste sorting quietly secured a spot on Time magazine's Best Inventions of 2025 list. It was the only Chinese company featured in the "Reuse & Recycle" category.

The company, DataBeyond, is redefining the true meaning of "tech for good" by choosing a path that is both difficult and worthwhile.

The story begins in a decidedly unglamorous setting. In 2018, Mo Zhuoya, a mechatronics engineering graduate from Harbin Institute of Technology, stepped into a recycling center. She was met with mountains of discarded clothing and the sharp, sour stench of decay. Dozens of workers were picking through the jumbled piles by hand. Because complex blended fabrics rendered traditional sorting machines completely blind, the entire operation had to rely on human eyes and hands.

It was there that Mo made a decision: She would apply her years of expertise in robotics and smart manufacturing to waste sorting.

But bringing laboratory algorithms into the messy reality of a waste depot was no small feat. The first robot they built had a mere 70% accuracy rate. Undeterred, Mo and her team dug in. By day, they crouched beside smelly conveyor belts, manually sifting through garments alongside the workers. By night, they fed their AI system image after image. Realizing that textile sorting requires identifying the material itself rather than just its external appearance, the team chose to combine hyperspectral imaging with AI algorithms, eventually developing a state-of-the-art optical fabric sorter. This machine takes just 0.03 seconds to identify complex blends. Once identified, high-pressure air jets act like a surgeon's scalpel, precisely blowing the target materials off a high-speed belt into their designated bins.

The results were transformative. It used to take 30 workers to sort about 2 metric tons of used clothing every hour. Now, a single machine can handle more than 2 metric tons an hour, with an accuracy rate as high as 98%. Waste sorting has finally achieved true industrial standardization.

This AI-powered waste-sorting technology hasn't just scaled domestically in China; it has also been exported to more than 40 countries and regions, including Japan and Italy. It is helping communities worldwide tackle the dirtiest, most grueling and most hazardous waste processing tasks.

Amid geopolitical noise and often politicized narratives surrounding China's AI development, DataBeyond offers a powerful rebuttal through tangible social impact. The company proves that cutting-edge AI shouldn't just live on servers in the cloud; it belongs in the trenches, taking on the harsh environments that humans shouldn't have to endure. Here, automation isn't about replacing people — it's about protecting human health and dignity.

As we march toward an intelligent era, AI must be more than a cold, calculated race for efficiency. From the mundane task of sorting waste to the broader vision of a global green transition, Chinese innovators are demonstrating how inclusive, tech-for-good values can thrive. As we accelerate toward the future, these innovators are helping ensure that the emerging intelligent era is grounded in human-centric values. More of this article (Morningstar) – link – more like this (textiles) – link – more link this (China) - link

(POL) DOES CHEMICAL RECYCLING ACTUALLY WORK?

New York state Sen. Pete Harckham (D) speaks on the state Capitol on May 28, 2025, in Albany, New York. | Kena Betancur/AP

NEW YORK — A thorny question is dividing Democrats in Albany and thwarting legislative efforts to reduce toxic plastic waste: Does chemical recycling actually work?

As New York lawmakers gear up for what is poised to be another heated battle over plastics legislation in 2027, the industry is pushing for such operations to be part of the solution to the plastic waste problem.

But anti-plastics advocates say they are a distraction to the actual solution of reducing plastic waste, and chemical recycling facilities are falling victim to economic and technological challenges.

Chemical recycling “is a farce,” said Democratic state Sen. Pete Harckham, sponsor of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. “These [facilities] are an environmental hazard. They don’t do what they say.”

Harckham’s legislation mandates ambitious reductions in single-use plastic packaging, along with shifting the cost of waste management from taxpayers to packaging producers. It would also ban a range of toxic chemicals from being added to plastic products, including phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS and polystyrene.

But industry groups have come out in force in opposition to PRRIA. One of their chief gripes is that it would bar chemical recycling processes from falling under the definition of “recycling” unlike other proposals that have the industry’s support. Those bills include the Affordable Waste Reduction Act, sponsored by Democrats Chantel Jackson in the Assembly and Monica Martinez in the Senate, and a bill that would decrease advanced recycling facilities’ regulatory burden, sponsored by state Sen. Jeremy Cooney and state Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman, both Democrats.

“One of our big priorities is to allow competition for advanced recycling [technologies],” Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers for the American Chemistry Council, said in an interview last fall about PRRIA. Eisenberg argues the bill would raise costs for consumers, particularly due to the way it mandates reductions in single-use packaging.

Chemical recycling, also known as advanced recycling, is an umbrella term for a variety of ways non-mechanical recycling facilities process plastics. The most common technology is pyrolysis, which uses high temperatures and low oxygen to degrade plastic into an oil that can be further refined. Similarly, gasification uses heat to degrade plastic into a gas. There are also solvent-based processes like solvolysis and dissolution, which use chemical reactions to break down plastics.

The competing proposals underscore a lack of consensus among Democrats on what to do about the plastic waste problem that has been growing since China stopped importing certain types of recyclable waste in 2017. Recycling has since become more costly and complicated, found a 2018 report from New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

DiNapoli’s office estimated that local governments outside New York City spent $900 million on collecting and disposing of waste, while the Big Apple’s Department of Sanitation has a budget of $1.97 billion for this year. More of this article (Politico) – link – more like this (chemical recycling) – link – more like this (New York) - link

(AMW) BMW SIGNS RECYCLING AGREEMENT WITH PREZERO

BMW Group and PreZero, the circular economy company that forms part of the Schwarz Group, have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to develop a business model for recycling end-of-life vehicles across the European automotive industry. 

The two companies said the partnership aims to create closed-loop material cycles, reduce dependence on primary raw materials and make supply chains more resilient by using end-of-life vehicles as a source of secondary materials.

Under the agreement, signed at the IPAI campus in Heilbronn, Germany, the companies will jointly test recycling processes and develop new approaches to material flow management. BMW Group said it will contribute design for recycling expertise and insights from its in-house Recycling and Dismantling Centre, while PreZero will share knowledge of European material flows and sorting technologies, as well as its expertise as one of Europe’s leading battery recyclers.

The partnership will initially focus on keeping vehicle components in use for as long as possible, before recovering materials including steel, aluminium, plastics and battery raw materials through recycling processes.

Ralf Hattler, Senior Vice President of Customer Support and Aftersales at BMW Group, said: “Together with PreZero, we are creating the conditions needed to design a vehicle’s entire value chain in a way that keeps materials and components of the highest quality in the loop for as long as possible.”

Carsten Dülfer, Chief Executive Officer of PreZero in Germany, added: “After acquiring Europe’s largest battery recycling facility last year, we are now taking the next step with the BMW Group towards establishing a functional circular economy in the automotive industry.” (05/02/26) More from this publication (Automotive World) - link - more like this (BMW) - link - more like this (PreZero) - link

(GUF) HALF A MILLION PAGEVIEWS - THANK YOU

Image inspiration - Man Ray - link

(GRE) $19 MILLION FOOD WASTE INVESTMENT

The Robertson Foundation has invested $19M in six organisations working to lower methane emissions from the food system via plant-forward dietary shifts and food waste reduction.

US grant-making organisation Robertson Foundation is pouring millions into efforts to reduce emissions from the agrifood system. The philanthropic group, established by Tiger Management founder Jilian Robertson Jr three decades ago, has committed $19M to six organisations advancing practical solutions to lower methane emissions from across the food industry.

The beneficiaries of the investment, which covers a three-year period, are Tilt Collective, American Heart Association, World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund, Full Circle Future, and Zero Food Waste Coalition.

“These six organisations are demonstrating that addressing climate change can begin in unexpected places – from the food we serve to the food we waste,” Christy Loper, environment programme director at the Robertson Foundation, said in a LinkedIn post. The organisations receiving the funding are focused on one of two key approaches to curbing methane emissions from the food system.

The World Wildlife Fund, Zero Food Waste Coalition and Full Circle Future are all targeting food waste reduction. Their efforts include standardising date labels, supporting composting and food-sharing programmes in K-12 schools, and designing policies to prevent organic waste from entering landfills. “Food waste and the methane pollution it creates is finally getting the attention it deserves, and that’s thanks in large part to funders who’ve been willing to invest in this work long before it was in the spotlight,” Katherine Blauvelt, executive director of Full Circle Future, said in a LinkedIn post.

The other three organisations are leveraging the potential of dietary shifts. Tilt Collective and the World Resources Institute will work to increase access to healthy protein offerings at universities, hospitals, stadiums, and restaurants. More of this article (green queen) - link - more like this (food waste) - link - more like this (methane emissions) - link

(GUF) PADWORTH

Image inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link

This week I had the opportunity to take a client on a Duty of Care visit to Veolia's In Vessel Composting facility at Padworth.

From the moment you arrive, the scale of the operation is impressive. Thousands of tonnes of green waste pass through the site each year, transforming what many people dismiss as little more than garden rubbish into high-quality compost that meets the demanding PAS 100 specification.

Waste management is often perceived as a simple process: collect it, tip it and move on. The reality is very different. Every successful recycling operation depends on the knowledge, judgement and experience of the people running it. Their decisions determine whether a material genuinely becomes a valuable product or simply remains waste destined for disposal.

At Padworth, every stage of the composting process is carefully controlled. Incoming loads are inspected, unsuitable materials are removed, feedstocks are blended to achieve the correct balance and temperature, moisture and oxygen levels are continually monitored throughout the composting cycle. These controls aren't simply good practice, they're essential to producing a safe, consistent product that complies with resupply accreditation.

Watching the process reinforces an important point. Recycling doesn't happen because material arrives at a facility. It happens because skilled people understand how to process that material correctly, recognise problems before they become failures and maintain exacting standards day after day and that's something I believe our industry often struggles to communicate. We tend to showcase the equipment, the vehicles and the technology, yet the greatest asset at any recycling facility is the expertise of the people operating it and without that knowledge, the most sophisticated machinery in the world is simply steel and hydraulics.

Visits such as this are invaluable because they allow our clients to see what happens beyond the collection vehicle. They demonstrate that compliant recycling is a carefully managed manufacturing process, not simply waste disappearing through a gate.

Many thanks to the team at Veolia Padworth for taking the time to show us around and for sharing their knowledge so openly. It was a timely reminder that the success of the circular economy depends not only on the infrastructure we build, but on the professionalism of the people who make it work every single day. More like this (IVC) - link - more like this (Veolia) - link - more like this (composting) - link

(EBC) SOUTH KOREA INTRODUCES 'PLASTIC TOYS' EPR

South Korea will include plastic toys under its extended producer responsibility (EPR) recycling scheme from 2026, as part of efforts to boost resource circulation and reduce incineration and landfill waste. (17/12/2025)

Plastic toys had previously been classified as “difficult-to-recycle items” and were subject to waste disposal charges rather than mandatory recycling. Under the EPR system, producers meet their recycling obligations by paying contributions to a producer responsibility organisation, which then pays subsidies to recycling companies based on performance, according to the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment.

Although most toys are made of plastic and are technically recyclable, they have often been recycled at low quality alongside other materials, or incinerated or landfilled, due to limited incentives for recyclers to sort them separately, the ministry said. Unclear disposal guidelines have also resulted in toys frequently being thrown away as general household waste.

The government has since 2019 piloted a toy recycling system through voluntary agreements with producer groups, setting annual recycling targets that were consistently exceeded.

Under the new rules, which kick off from 1 January 2026, 18 categories of toys – including activity, puzzle, block and assembly toys – will be covered by the EPR scheme. The standard recycling cost has been set at KRW343 ($0.26) per kilogramme, reflecting the costs of collection, transport, sorting and recycling. Disposal rules for consumers will also be clarified. Ordinary plastic toys can be disposed of with other plastic waste, while toys containing batteries or electronic components must be taken to designated small appliance or e-waste collection points to reduce fire risks.

The revision also adjusts recycling cost benchmarks for other items under the scheme, lowering rates for 30 categories, including metal cans, while raising them for four items such as paper cartons, reflecting technological advances, material price changes and inflation. “This marks a turning point in bringing plastic toys that were previously incinerated or landfilled back into the resource cycle,” Kim Go-eung, director general for resource circulation at the ministry, said in a statement.

South Korea generates one of the highest volumes of plastic waste per capita among OECD countries, driven by heavy use of packaging and disposable consumer goods. According to government data, the country produces several million tonnes of plastic waste each year, with plastic making up a significant share of household waste. While recycling rates are officially high, a significant share of plastic waste has historically been incinerated or landfilled, particularly items deemed difficult to recycle, such as mixed or composite plastics.

In recent years, the government has tightened recycling standards, expanded extended producer responsibility schemes and restricted waste exports, following disruptions to overseas recycling markets, including China’s import ban introduced in 2018. 

Thoughts

South Korea's decision to bring plastic toys within its Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme is another reminder that EPR is evolving far beyond packaging. Rather than treating toys simply as household waste, the policy recognises that producers should also play a role in funding their recovery and recycling.

What stands out to me is the willingness to tackle a difficult waste stream that many countries have largely ignored. Plastic toys are often made from mixed polymers, may contain electronics or batteries and are frequently discarded in residual waste. They're not an easy recycling success story but South Korea has chosen to address the problem rather than avoid it.

Having first piloted the approach and demonstrated that collection targets could be exceeded, the SK government has now embedded the system into national policy. It's a practical example of evidence informing legislation rather than legislation hoping the evidence will follow.

Whether the scheme ultimately delivers genuine circularity or simply higher collection rates remains to be seen but it's an ambitious step that many other countries, including the UK will watch with interest. If EPR is to become a genuine driver of resource efficiency rather than simply a funding mechanism, this is exactly the sort of innovation worth following.

More of this article (eco-business.com) - link - more like this (toys) - link - more like this (Korea) - link

(GUF) BOTLEY ROAD, OXFORD

Contractors at the Botley Road Oxford Railway Station project have announced today that they've just uncovered a nest containing two hundred great crested newts, nine badgers, fifty six bats, twelve dormice, sixty three otters and a water vole sitting on a WWII German SC 2500 UXB covered in Japanese knotweed sitting within the remains of a Roman villa.

They have advised that this may delay the project - calls for resignation - link - more like this (railways) - link - more like this (road works) - link

(GUF) FLEXIBLE PLASTICS - WHY BOTHER

Image inspiration - René Magritte - link

The announcement that mandatory household collections of flexible plastic packaging in England will now be delayed until 2030 has understandably disappointed many organisations that have invested significant time and effort promoting packaging recyclability. Others, particularly within local government and parts of the waste management industry have in turn argued that the additional time is necessary because the collection, sorting and reprocessing infrastructure is simply not yet ready. Perhaps both sides are focusing on the wrong question?

Instead of asking how quickly can we collect flexible plastics, maybe we should be asking whether mixed household flexible plastics should ever have been considered a mainstream recyclable material in the first place?

For years, policy has moved steadily towards expanding household recycling collections to include more materials; an attractive ambition but ambition alone doesn't create a circular economy as ultimately, recycling depends on more than collection; it requires consistent feedstock, viable reprocessing and reliable end markets for the recycled material, and that's where flexible plastics become challenging.

According to WRAP, flexible plastic packaging accounts for more than a quarter of consumer plastic packaging placed on the UK market but only around 7% is currently recycled. WRAP identifies multiple reasons including packaging design, limited collection infrastructure, sorting challenges, insufficient reprocessing capacity and underdeveloped end markets which indicates that the challenge extends far beyond simply asking households to put more material into their recycling bin.

Compared with relatively well established bottle waste streams such as PET and HDPE, mixed household flexible plastics are much lighter, made from many different plastic types and significantly harder to sort into consistent recycling feedstock. Even where they are successfully recycled, much of the resulting material is currently used in products such as refuse sacks, drainage products, agricultural applications and construction products rather than returning to equivalent food contact packaging and whilst there's absolutely nothing wrong with those products; they all represent genuine recycling and have an important role to play but do they demonstrate a mature circular economy or simply illustrate the current limitations of the market itself?

Extended Producer Responsibility will undoubtedly change who pays for managing packaging waste and it should, in time, encourage better packaging design but changing who funds a recycling system doesn't automatically create domestic reprocessing capacity or robust commercial demand for the recyclate that it produces. Those remain separate challenges and this raises what I believe is the more important policy question.

If nationwide household collections require significant new investment in collection systems, sorting facilities, reprocessing infrastructure and continuing producer support, shouldn't the government firstly demonstrate that those investments deliver greater environmental benefit than alternative approaches such as better packaging design, waste prevention, reuse systems or focusing resources on materials where mature closed loop markets already exist? All things considered, public policy shouldn't simply be about increasing recycling tonnages; in reality, shouldn't it be about achieving the greatest environmental benefit from finite resources?

None of this is an argument against flexible plastics themselves. In many applications they reduce packaging weight, help protect products and extend shelf life, potentially preventing food waste. Neither is this an argument against specialist recycling companies recovering clean, consistent flexible plastic streams. It is, however, a challenge to the assumption that every flexible plastic package naturally belongs within a universal household recycling system?

Perhaps mixed household flexible plastics are better regarded as specialist materials requiring specialist collection and specialist reprocessing, funded/subsidised appropriately by those placing them on the market and/or using them, rather than assuming they can simply be added to mainstream kerbside collections.

The decision to delay household collections until 2030 may therefore represent something other than a lack of ambition. It may unintentionally reflect an acknowledgement that collection infrastructure alone cannot create a circular economy.

In my opinion, the real test of successful recycling isn't how much material we collect, it's whether we can consistently transform that material into products for which there is genuine, sustainable demand and I'd welcome informed debate on that proposition. WRAP - link - more like this (soft plastics) - link - more like this (WRAP) - link