(EUN) FINLAND OPENS NUCLEAR ONKALO

A Posiva worker stands by vehicles inside a tunnel at the Onkalo nuclear waste repository on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland, Tuesday 24 February, 2026. AP Photo

Onkalo is the world's first facility for permanently disposing radioactive spent nuclear fuel. It is expected to operate until the 2120s.

After decades of construction, the world's first facility for permanently disposing of spent nuclear fuel is set to begin operations in Finland, with authorities expected to grant a license within months.

The structure will become a final resting place for tons of dangerous radioactive waste. The building of Onkalo, which means “cave” in Finnish, began on the west coast in 2004. The €1 billion facility is expected to operate until the 2120s.

'Isolated from civilisation'

The facility is located on the island of Olkiluoto, in a dense wooded area. The closest town is Eurajoki, about 15 kilometres away, which is home to roughly 9,000 people, many of whom work at the power plant or storage facility.

The site is near three of Finland’s five nuclear reactors. It was chosen for its bedrock, known for its high stability and low risk of earthquakes. "The isolation from the civilisation and mankind on the surface is important because of the radiation caused by the waste," said Tuomas Pere, geologist at Posiva Oy, the company responsible for Finnish nuclear waste's management.

"But the thing is that by doing this final disposal, we can dispose of the waste more safely than by storing it in facilities located on the ground surface," he added.
Using unmanned machinery at a nearby encapsulation plant, radioactive rods will be sealed in copper canisters and then buried deep in tunnels over 400 metres underground, then packed in with “buffer” layers of water-absorbing bentonite clay.

Onkalo can store 6,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel, according to Posiva.

According to a 2022 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, almost 400,000 tons of spent fuel have been produced since the 1950s, with two-thirds remaining in temporary storage and one-third being recycled in a complex process.

Currently, spent nuclear fuel is temporarily stored inside spent nuclear fuel pools at individual reactors and at dry cask storage sites above ground.

Remaining risks

But geologic disposal of nuclear waste is still fraught with “uncertainties”, warned Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an American nonprofit organisation.

“My view of nuclear waste disposal is that there’s no good option, but it’s important to find the least bad option,” he said.

He said that permanently storing nuclear waste underground is better than leaving it on the surface, because the material could be vulnerable to sabotage when kept above ground.
The risks associated with nuclear waste repositories will mainly affect “future generations,” Lyman added. “My view of nuclear waste disposal is that there’s no good option, but it’s important to find the least bad option,” he said.

He said that permanently storing nuclear waste underground is better than leaving it on the surface, because the material could be vulnerable to sabotage when kept above ground.
The risks associated with nuclear waste repositories will mainly affect “future generations,” Lyman added. Hence, nuclear semiotics is trying to develop warning signs about nuclear waste repositories that can be understood by humans 10,000 years from now - or much longer given that it takes hundreds of thousands of years before nuclear waste is no longer dangerous.

"We have had Chernobyl, we have had Fukushima and obviously the nuclear waste. We are perhaps somewhere close to a solution for that," Juha Aromaa, deputy programme manager at Greenpeace Finland, said, adding "nobody else in the world is anywhere near to solving this problem." In 1994, legislation was passed requiring nuclear waste generated in Finland to be handled, stored and permanently disposed of within the country’s borders. “Back then some of the waste was still exported, but we wanted to take care of it ourselves,” said Sari Multala, Finland's environment minister.

Multala did not rule out eventually accepting limited amounts of nuclear from other countries. More of this publication (Euro News) - link - more like this (nuclear waste) - link - more like this (Finland) - link

(GUF) DESIGNING FOR THE MACHINES

There’s a moment in every new piece of legislation where ambition meets reality and for the UK’s Deposit Return Scheme, that moment is a Reverse Vending Machine, because if your packaging doesn’t fit, you have a problem.

From ‘Recyclable’ to ‘Recognisable’

For years, manufacturers have been told to design packaging to be recyclable, now, they’re being told to design it to be recognisable; a subtle shift but a significant one.

Under the latest Exchange for Change Material Specification (April 2026), a container isn’t just judged on what it’s made from, it’s judged on whether a machine can identify it, scan it, weigh it and crush it with at least 95% accuracy. Miss that mark and your perfectly 'recyclable' packaging is suddenly downgraded to a manual return process; the operational equivalent of being sent to the naughty step.

The Reverse Vending Machine is now the gatekeeper of the circular economy and to pass through it containers must be PET, aluminium or steel; sit neatly within 150 ml to 3 litres; be stable, not top heavy and compress efficiently (up to 75% for cans). In other words, forget artistic packaging; this is engineering. Square bottles, quirky shapes, thick-walled plastics; anything that slows down or jams a machine will be quietly filtered out and excluded.

From Materials to Data

If recycling once revolved around materials, it now revolves around data. Every container must carry a unique, scheme-specific barcode linked to a central 'Article List' that updates daily across the network. No barcode? No deposit. Wrong barcode? No refund. Damaged barcode? Good luck with that.

We’re moving from waste management to product verification. From bins to databases. From designers to technical compliance managers. For the first time, operational practicality is baked into the rules. Bottles should aim for less than 50% label coverage to improve recycling quality and that’s not a suggestion, it’s a quiet warning because if your label design compromises material recovery, it won’t just affect recyclability scores; it will affect cost, compliance and acceptance or put another way: packaging is no longer just being designed for recycling, it’s being designed for system obedience.

The Rise of Manual Return – The Quiet Consequence

There’s a phrase buried in the Exchange for Change document that deserves more attention. 'Containers not meeting the minimum recognition standards will need to be returned via the Manual Return Process'. That sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Manual return means:

• Slower processing
• Higher handling costs
• Increased fraud risk
• Operational friction at retail

It’s not a fallback, it’s a politely worded penalty. Low-volume producers (≤6,250 units initially) pay no fees. There’s no mandatory DRS logo but they still need to register and report, meaning that even at the margins the system is watching.

The Proportionality Question

And this is where the scheme starts to feel slightly overbuilt. For all the language of circularity and reform, this is a highly controlled national infrastructure of scanners, barcodes, article lists, live database syncing, machine-recognition thresholds, fraud safeguards and manual return contingencies. All largely designed to capture drinks containers, not complex composites; not hazardous materials; not the genuinely difficult end of the waste stream.

This is all just for bottles and cans which are already being separated and collected through existing kerbside systems so the question becomes unavoidable: Is this level of engineering, control and cost proportionate to the material it is trying to recover?

At some point, the circular economy starts to resemble an expensive national sorting ritual for items that we were already collecting, or more accurately it risks feeling like a moon landing for drinks containers; an extraordinary level of engineering for a problem that was never that complex.

Standardisation Over Aspiration

Strip away the technical language and the message is clear: The circular economy is being standardised, not through aspiration; but through specification packaging that must be machine compatible; materials must be predictable; data must be traceable and anything that doesn’t fit that model becomes inefficient, expensive or obsolete. The DRS isn’t just trying to improve recycling rates, it’s trying to remove ambiguity from the system altogether.

In my opinion, the real issue isn’t whether the system can be made to work, it probably can and will; the issue is whether the cost, complexity and rigidity of making it work are justified by the material it's designed to recover because as the specification evolves, it begins to ask a different question entirely - not whether packaging is recyclable but whether it is acceptable to the machine and if it isn’t, it won’t survive the system. Exchange for Change - link - More like this (DRS) - link - more like this (DRS) - link - more like this (packaging) - link

(FUK) GOVERNMENT REJECTS FLY-TIPPING REFORMS

The government is facing mounting criticism after refusing to reform Britain’s fly-tipping laws, despite previously acknowledging the system is unjust.

Ministers rejected proposed changes on Wednesday 15 April that rural campaigners say would have corrected a long-running unfairness, leaving farmers and rural communities to continue bearing the cost of crimes committed against them.

Under current rules, fly-tipping remains one of the few offences where victims are held financially responsible. Landowners must clear waste dumped on their property and, if they fail to do so, risk prosecution for having controlled waste on their land.

Critics say this contrasts sharply with weak enforcement against offenders, with many local authorities rarely pursuing prosecutions. The result, campaigners argue, is a “ridiculous” system that punishes victims while allowing perpetrators to avoid accountability. Pressure for reform had been building in recent months. On 25 February, the House of Lords backed amendments aimed at overhauling the system — a move welcomed by rural groups across the UK. The government opposed the changes but was defeated in the vote. 

A coalition of organisations, led by the Countryside Alliance, then urged ministers to act, pointing to the government’s own Waste Crime Action Plan, published on 19 March, which acknowledged the unfairness of existing laws. The proposed amendments would have made convicted fly-tippers automatically liable for clean-up costs and any damage caused, while ensuring victims were no longer left to foot the bill.

They also sought to place a duty on local authorities to remove dumped waste and recover costs from offenders — a shift campaigners say would have strengthened enforcement while easing the burden on landowners. Despite this, ministers declined to accept the changes, prompting accusations that the government is ignoring its own findings. The issue is continuing to escalate. Fly-tipping is estimated to cost the UK economy around £1 billion each year, with incidents in England rising to 1.26 million — a 9% increase on the previous year. 

The government has previously said it is committed to tackling waste crime through measures set out in its Waste Crime Action Plan, though campaigners argue progress on the ground remains limited.

Johnnie Furse, spokesperson for the Countryside Alliance, said the decision had deepened frustration among rural communities. “Everyone agrees that the current system is a ridiculous injustice — even the government has admitted that. And so it beggars belief that now, when the opportunity was presented to the government to fix the broken system, they refused to do so.

“It seems that this government is all talk, and no action. If those in Westminster wish to prove otherwise, urgent action is direly needed.”

The decision is likely to intensify pressure on ministers, with campaigners warning the issue could become an increasingly significant concern for rural voters. More of the publication (FarmingUK) - link - more like this (farming) - link - more like this (fly-tipping) - link

(MOT) ADVANCED RECYCLING

Moms Clean Air Force staff and organizers stand on Capitol Hill, calling for strong protections from advanced recycling. Moms Clean Air Force

Amanda Rowoldt used to carefully collect all the plastic bags that accumulated in her home and drop them off in recycling bins at her local grocery store. She felt like she was “doing the right thing for the planet and for future generations.”

It wasn’t until years later that she learned there is no safe and effective way to recycle plastics. The bags in those bins were most likely ending up in a landfill. Angry and frustrated, the mother of two made it her mission to uncover the other myths she’d been told about plastic.

Amanda’s curiosity led her to join the national nonprofit Moms Clean Air Force where she now serves as the leader of their Ohio chapter. With the plastics industry on track to triple plastics production by mid-century, Amanda says she was determined to “protect her children and other families from the ever-growing plastics crisis.”

As traditional plastic recycling methods fall short, the industry is falsely claiming they have a new way to make plastic waste disappear—advanced recycling. They are touting this “advanced recycling” as the solution to our plastics waste problem.

But “advanced recycling” is not advanced, not recycling, and not good for the planet or people’s health. It is the petrochemical industry’s attempt to greenwash plastic waste incineration. Unfortunately, burning plastics is as toxic as it sounds. The process utilizes a type of incineration called “pyrolysis” to produce extremely contaminated oil while generating massive amounts of hazardous waste and hazardous air pollutants. This pollution from incinerating plastic can increase the risk of respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. It is especially dangerous for children, whose bodies are more vulnerable since they are still developing.

Last year, Amanda had a taste of what it would be like to live next to one of these facilities when she made the short drive to the Freepoint pyrolysis incinerator in Hebron, Ohio. As she pulled up next to the site, she saw black plumes of smoke coming out of the smokestacks and had to leave after only a few minutes due to sudden nausea and dizziness—but not before she captured footage. Amanda was able to leave the area but instantly thought of the families who could not and sprang into action.

The next day, she shared the video with a state lawmaker, whose staff member called the Ohio EPA that afternoon. The agency, whose job it is to enforce pollution controls to protect families, sent a team to inspect the facility. They temporarily shut down operations in late February after finding it had exceeded its air pollution limits. This citation wasn’t the end: Freepoint has since received multiple notices of violation from the Ohio EPA.

As violations mount, Amanda worries for the health of the surrounding community. The facility is located next to a residential neighborhood and schools, including a Purple Star elementary school a few miles away that serves military families.

Amanda is committed to helping safeguard health by holding lawmakers and environmental protection agencies accountable for doing their jobs protecting them from advanced recycling pollution. She says: “Without strong protections in place and enforcement, infants, children, and families near these facilities are at risk of serious illness.”

Communities Say “No” to Advanced Recycling

Freepoint is one of fewer than 10 so-called advanced recycling facilities operating in the United States, but at least 40 others have been proposed or are under construction, and the plastics industry has plans to build over 100 more.

Lani Wean is on the front lines fighting one of the facilities proposed in her state of West Virginia. Clean-Seas West Virginia is being built near her home in the Kanawha Valley, a short distance away from two schools and a public library. To add insult to injury, the site is just down the road from the Chemours chemical plant in the town of Belle, which has a long history of leaks and chemical disasters. This means that the toxic air pollutants and other hazardous byproducts from Clean Seas would be coupled with the already significant pollution in the area.

Lani’s work to raise awareness of the potential pollution from the facility has centered on sharing accurate information with the community and its leaders and serving as a go-between with legal and technical experts and her neighbors. “Our families deserve transparency and the opportunity for public input when industrial polluters propose to move into our neighborhoods,” says Lani. She has taken to radio, print, and social media to spread the word about Clean-Seas’ threat. She spoke with elected officials and council members about the impacts advanced recycling pollution can have on health. And she partnered with other groups like The Black Appalachian Coalition (BLAC) to keep residents informed.

As the families in West Virginia continue to speak up against the proposed Clean Seas facility, they are inspired by the wins seen in other states. Just next door in Pennsylvania, advanced recycling companies Encina and Alterra canceled their plans to build plastics incinerators when communities came together to protest them.

The Encina plant, slated for Point Township, was Pennsylvania’s first proposed advanced recycling plant and would have been the largest in the nation. The company ultimately withdrew its plans in 2024 following vigorous community opposition, permitting deficiencies, rejection by the zoning board, and a unanimous opposition resolution from the neighboring Northumberland Borough Council. Rachel Meyer, who was part of the coalition of groups organizing against advanced recycling buildout in Pennsylvania, said, “This win for the people of Northumberland County and beyond shows that when people receive facts about advanced recycling, people see it is not a solution to the plastic crisis but rather a source of toxic air and water pollution for communities across the state.” More of this article (Mother Jones) - link - more like this (advanced recycling) - link - more like this (Ohio) - link - more like this (plastic) - link

(GRE) ECO COSMETICS FROM BREAD WASTE

UK biotech startup Clean Food Group has launched CleanOil, a waste-derived yeast fat that can help the beauty and cosmetics sector shift away from the planet-harming palm oil.

As more consumers seek cleaner, more sustainable formulations when buying personal care products, one UK startup has a solution built on microbes.

Based in Greater London, Clean Food Group leverages food waste, yeast, and fermentation to create sustainable alternatives to climate-harming fats and oils for an array of industries.

It’s now launching the biotech-driven ingredient platform for the beauty sector, which will be unveiled at the In-Cosmetics Global show in Paris (April 14-16).

“The launch of CleanOil is a defining moment for us as a business,” said Clean Food Group CEO Alex Neves. “We have always believed biotechnology has the potential to fundamentally reshape how ingredients are made, and with CleanOil, we are showing that sustainable alternatives can meet, if not exceed, the performance expectations of the beauty industry.”

A future-friendly fat to replace harmful incumbents

Clean Food Group has its roots in the University of Bath, where co-founder and technical lead Chris Chuck led a 10-year research effort that forms the base of the firm’s technology, aided by £7.5M in UK government funding. Its proprietary CleanOil platform feeds scalable non-GMO yeast strains on circular feedstocks like surplus bread, turning it into high-performance, low-impact alternatives to tropical fats like palm and coconut oil, as well as petroleum-based mineral oils.

The platform has spawned several products that can be produced at price parity to farmed alternatives. CleanOil 40 is meant for confectionery and spreads, CleanFat 50 for bakery and dairy, and Clean Protein+ is an emulsifier for mayo and pet food. More of this article (green queen) - link - more like this (cosmetics) - link - more like this (London) - link - more like this (yeast) - link

(ICN) $1 BILLION DEAL TO ABANDON OFFSHORE WIND

The Department of the Interior recently announced an agreement to pay the multinational company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its offshore wind leases and instead invest in fossil fuel production in the U.S.

The federal government said it will reimburse TotalEnergies for money spent on U.S. oil, natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) production, up to the cost of the leases. The projects were to be located off the coasts of New York and North Carolina.

The payments are the latest move in the Trump administration’s campaign to stifle the offshore wind industry, months after a federal judge reversed its attempt to kill projects along the East Coast.

Now, several of those major offshore wind projects are coming online, including Revolution Wind in New England and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.

Katharine Kollins is the president of the advocacy group Southeastern Wind Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for wind energy across Southern states. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JENNI DOERING: What was your reaction when you heard the news of this $1 billion payment?

KATHARINE KOLLINS: I was surprised and disappointed. This is obviously another blow to offshore wind. We’ve seen a number of them throughout the current administration, and it’s really a dual blow to the taxpayer. Because you’ve got consumers both paying TotalEnergies back for nearly a billion dollars of a lease payment, and then higher long-term costs of a less-diverse and less-efficient energy mix.

DOERING: Supporters of the Trump administration deal with TotalEnergies say that this $1 billion is merely a refund on money that the company has paid the government, and so taxpayers are breaking even. What’s your response to that argument?

KOLLINS: My response to the argument is that these funds were already paid and accounted for, and I don’t think that those same folks would be supportive of the administration refunding the tax dollars that we all paid last year. Just because we’ve already paid something doesn’t mean that it is acceptable to then refund it a year later, when those funds were already allocated by the Treasury Department.

DOERING: The courts overturned the Trump administration’s order to shut down offshore wind projects on the grounds of national security. What do you make of this new strategy to pay companies like TotalEnergies to just give up their leases?

KOLLINS: It is a continuation of the president’s strategy to do whatever he can to cripple this industry. I think in the long run, it’s futile, because offshore wind is a much-needed energy generation source, especially on the East Coast, and it’s a phenomenal economic development tool. The fundamentals of offshore wind make sense for the U.S., but in the short term, he has made developing offshore wind very difficult and driven a lot of investors away from the U.S., away from offshore wind and toward other investments.

DOERING: What’s the economic impact of canceling offshore wind farms? Who wins and who loses? More of this article (Inside Climate News) - link - more like this (wind) - link - more like this (New York) - link - more like this (TotalEnergies) - link

(GUF) £1.5 BILLION AND NO SHOPPING LIST

The UK’s new packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) scheme is expected to generate around £1.5 billion per year. That’s not small change; that’s not a new bin lorry money; that’s enough money to reshape the entire UK recycling system but we still don’t have a clear, publicly understood plan for how it will be spent.

Who Actually Gets the Money?

Under pEPR, the funding is primarily intended for local authorities responsible for household waste collection and disposal such as Waste Collection Authorities (WCAs) – typically district and borough councils and Waste Disposal Authorities (WDAs) – typically county councils or unitary authorities Across England, this breaks down roughly as 309 Waste Collection Authorities/31 Waste Disposal Authorities.

In addition, there are also Unitary Authorities (doing both roles), combined authorities and partnerships and the sevolved nations (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) running parallel systems so depending on how you count it, you’re looking at roughly 400 local authorities across the UK that could be eligible to receive pEPR funding in some form.

In theory, pEPR is beautifully simple - packaging producers pay a charge for every tonne of packaging they place on the UK market - local authorities get funded and hey presto, recycling improves. The funding is meant to cover the efficient and effective cost of managing household packaging waste including the collection (bins, vehicles, crews), sorting, recycling, communications, labelling, data reporting and compliance.

In short, producers pick up the tab for packaging waste that households generate. A fair principle which is long overdue but unfortunately still without a clear spending blueprint.

For a £1.5 billion annual fund, we still don’t have a clear national investment plan; a standardised model for how councils should use the money; a transparent breakdown of expected allocations per authority or a defined link between funding and performance outcomes. At the moment, it's a bit - 'Here’s the money… we’ll work out the details later' which, in waste terms is the policy equivalent of ordering a skip without knowing where you’re delivering it.

Reinforcing the Status Quo

I believe that without structure, this funding seriously risks being used just to plug existing budget gaps and/or maintaining current (often inefficient) collection systems; continued inconsistent material streams actually recycled across regions and if the system doesn’t change, the outcomes obviously won’t either.

No Link to Procurement Behaviour

Waste doesn’t start in the bin store. It starts in procurement and pEPR is supposed to influence producers through modulated fees (based on how hard the packaging is to recycle) but if local authorities aren’t aligned with that signal we get a disconnect where producers pay more for hard-to-recycle packaging, councils still struggle to process it and the system absorbs the cost but doesn’t fix the cause which will only (understandably) result in push back from the packaging manufacturers.

A Data Gap in a Data-Driven Era

With Digital Waste Tracking on the horizon (don't hold your breath for phase 3), we’re about to enter a world where waste is tracked in near real time; the responsibility becomes traceable and poor data becomes visible, yet pEPR funding isn’t clearly tied to data quality improvements, infrastructure for tracking or standardised reporting systems which raises a question; are we funding yesterday’s system rather than facilitating the arrival of tomorrow’s?

What Should Be Happening?

If £1.5 billion is genuinely on the table each year, then at minimum we should see:

• A National Investment Framework with clear guidance on what councils should spend the money on and what “efficient and effective” actually means?

• Performance-Linked Funding. Not just: “Here’s your allocation” but “Here’s your allocation—based on recycling performance, contamination levels and documented improvement”

• Standardisation of Collections with fewer variations, more consistency of the materials collected, the container types and labelling otherwise we’re just funding confusion at scale.

We need alignment with procurement and EPR signals making sure hard-to-recycle materials become operationally and financially unattractive and easy-to-recycle materials flow through the system efficiently (the RAM structure should address this) - link

• Integration with Digital Waste Tracking - we should use funding to upgrade systems, improve data accuracy and enable real-time reporting.

This Is a 'once in a generation' opportunity - £1.5 billion per year is not just funding. Used properly, it could standardise recycling across the UK driving better product design, reducing residual waste, improving data and compliance. Used poorly, it becomes just another line in a budget spreadsheet. If we don’t decide what this money is for, the system will decide for us and the system, historically, isn’t great at change. More like this (pEPR) - link - more like this (packaging) - link

(GRI) UTAH CRAVES NUCLEAR - (WASTE)

The Republicans who dominate Utah’s politics — from the legislature to the governor’s mansion — are aggressively pursuing nuclear power, but a problem that had confounded fission supporters over the last century lingers: what to do with all the dangerous waste. 

Now the state is exploring whether to become a solution — by storing nuclear waste in the massive salt deposit in Millard County, a rural part of the state with a long history of meeting the West’s energy needs.

Caverns carved into that salt deposit already hold natural gas liquids, gasoline, and other fuels. Separate storage of hydrogen began there this year to support the massive Intermountain Power Plant’s shift from coal generation to carbon-free energy.

The Trump administration recently announced that it wants states to volunteer as hosts for “nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses” — sites that will take spent radioactive material for a variety of uses, such as storage, recycling, enrichment, fabrication, or powering manufacturing and data centers.

The same day in late January that the U.S. Department of Energy began soliciting states to host campuses, state Senator Derrin Owens, a Republican, contacted several other lawmakers, lobbyists, private equity investors, and Millard County officials, in an email obtained by the Millard County Chronicle Progress and shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.

“Friends,” Owens wrote on January 28, “HERE IT IS – this is Utah’s once in a lifetime opportunity to host one of these sites.” (Owens declined to comment for this story.)

Owens, who represents half of Millard County, noted that the group had “tried to lay the groundwork” for opportunities to store and repurpose nuclear waste with Curio, a startup headquartered in Washington D.C. that’s developing a process to recycle spent fuel.

Millard County’s salt dome — a remnant of an ancient ocean from the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth — apparently makes Utah a particularly attractive candidate. The only other state interested in becoming a nuclear waste campus that has such a formation is Mississippi, according to Owens. “Let’s lead the West,” the state senator wrote. More of this article (Grist) - link - more like this (Utah) - link - more like this (nuclear waste) - link