Latest News

THE Recycle Organics Program has signed a partnership with the Lautoka City Council on organic waste management. Speaking at the signing on Thursday, consultant Wayne Fuakilau said many countries around the world are facing an urgent need to reduce emissions and find innovative solutions that deliver impact quickly. Fiji, our country, and many like it, and here in Lautoka also face significant waste management challenges due to limited land availability for landfill and dumpsite expansion, he said. And the difficulty of finding new sites for future development. He said the Recycle Organics Program is dedicated to addressing these challenges through international co-operation. Having built a platform across the Global South since 2017 that brings together governments, NGOs, the private sector, and communities across more than 25 countries. The program promotes opportunities to invest in the valorisation of organic waste and reduce the amount of material going to final disposal. Mr Fuakilau said Fiji and Samoa were the first Pacific countries, for this project. And for the municipality three councils were selected based on interest to partner and pilot this program. Savusavu Town Council, Nausori Town Council and Lautoka City Council, and we thank the Fijian Government through the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, for submitting this project as a cabinet paper endorsed by our leaders in Parliament.

The legislation divided major recyclers, organics recyclers and trade groups over mass balance accounting, plastics in compost and more. The California legislature crosses a key deadline Friday for bills to have a shot at becoming law in the second half of its session, which runs through Aug. 31. Multiple packaging-related bills cracking down on recycled content and compostable labeling advanced. “AB 2253 helps ensure honesty and accountability in the marketplace while protecting consumers and supporting real sustainability efforts,” said Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, who sponsored the Protecting Consumers Against Greenwashing Act. The California Product Stewardship Council, Californians Against Waste and other advocacy groups were among the supporters. “California has a chance to lead again by making recycled-content claims mean what people think they mean,” Nick Lapis, CAW’s director of advocacy, said in a statement. The bill was also supported by recyclers such as Republic Services, PureCycle and the Ecology Center. Opposition as of April included Ameripen, the American Beverage Association, American Chemistry Council, Glass Packaging Institute, Plastics Industry Association and others. The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, would prohibit the sale of “compostable” or “home compostable” products that are made entirely or partially of plastic come 2027. Packaging groups have worried that such a move could limit solutions during a time when California is also trying to implement extended producer responsibility and source reduction law SB 54 and organics separation mandate SB 1383. “At its core, AB 1812 treats all compostable polymers as inherently problematic rather than distinguishing between applications that create operational challenges and those that directly advance state environmental goals,” CAW previously said, wishing instead for legislation with tailored exemptions, potentially for food scrap bin liners, compostable coatings...

The gold may be hidden in household items that many people treat as junk, such as old cell phones, routers, modems, motherboards, televisions, and even unused appliances. The metal appears in small but valuable quantities in the internal circuits of these devices.

The virtually indestructible Pfas waste puts largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates say The nation’s garbage incinerators are largely failing to eliminate Pfas “forever chemicals” air pollution, and are putting people in largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates and independent experts warn. The powerful waste management industry is increasingly pushing incinerators as a solution to virtually indestructible Pfas waste, and a new industry trade group report alleges Minnesota’s incinerators are reducing their forever chemical emissions by 99.6%. Other incinerator operators have made similar reduction claims. The report also comes amid fights to shut down incinerators in Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and a lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency over what it characterizes as a weak update to its emissions standards for the facilities, which do not include Pfas. Nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators operate nationally, including seven in Minnesota. The new Minnesota report is full of bad assumptions, incomplete data, misleading language, and fails to conduct proper testing, according to an analysis by the Zero Burn Coalition advocacy group and reviews by independent incineration experts. Instead, advocates say, Minnesota’s facilities are probably poisoning the surrounding neighborhoods with Pfas and a cocktail of other dangerous pollutants that garbage incineration often emits. The report “deceives the public into thinking [incineration] is safe”, said Nazir Khan, executive director of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table. “This trash becomes the problem of the poor and marginalized to deal with in their bodies,” he added. In a statement, the Minnesota Resources Recovery Association (MRRA) industry trade group that authored the report said Zero Burn’s analysis raised some valid points, but “does not support the conclusion that Pfas emissions from [Minnesota incinerators...

Mumbai launches Kanjurmarg landfill green buffer plan with large scale plantation and pollution control measures to improve urban resilience.....

by Silvia Martelli (Il Sole 24 Ore), Gianpaolo Sorgi (Voxeurope, France), Ana Somavilla (El Confidencial, Spain) and Ieva Kniukštienė (Delphi, Lithuania) For decades, the symbol of tobacco consumption was the cigarette butt: small, ubiquitous, difficult to dispose of. Today, however, a new, more complex and potentially more dangerous type of waste is appearing in European cities: disposable electronic cigarettes. Coloured, cheap and designed to be consumed quickly, so-called 'puffs' contain plastic, electronic circuits, chemical liquids and lithium batteries. A combination that turns them, at the end of their use, into real electronic waste. And while the public debate focuses mainly on the effects of vaping on health - particularly among teenagers and the very young - environmental alarm is growing in parallel. Many devices end up in municipal bins or directly in the street, instead of being disposed of in dedicated e-waste circuits. The consequences range from the dispersion of polluting materials to the risk of fires in waste treatment plants caused by damaged lithium batteries. Faced with the rapid spread of single-use e-cigs, several European countries are starting to take action. Some, such as Belgium and France, have chosen the path of a ban. Others are strengthening collection and producer responsibility systems. In the background, a common question remains: how to handle technological products designed to last a few days, but destined to leave a much longer environmental footprint? France is one of the countries that has taken the hardest line. With a law of 24 February 2025, Paris banned the sale, distribution and even possession for commercial purposes of pre-filled and non-refillable disposable electronic cigarettes. However, the measure does not introduce a specific collection system for these devices: e-cigs remain covered by the general legislation on electronic waste and batteries. In practice, the devices have to be delivered to the normal col...

New York’s new symbol could be a rotten apple. The city’s nastiest table scraps — from old coffee filters to spoiled spinach bunches and greasy boxes — are being recycled back into food and flowers, as residents across the five boroughs have collected some 5 million pounds of decayed waste produced under New York’s controversial composting law. An estimated 10,000 urban farmers have used the recycled scraps — which they dub “Black Gold” — to nourish their home gardens and grow what they say are “unbelievable” crops. “This compost produces great vegetables. My fig trees love this stuff. I got four fig trees and they grow so many figs — I can’t keep up. You taste the difference in your fruits and vegetables using this compost. Oh, my word, it’s unbelievable,” said Dominick Rondinelli, 76, who says he takes as many bags of compost as he can grab from the Staten Island Compost Facility’s free giveaways. “It’s not horse manure. It doesn’t give off an odor. Your neighbors can’t complain, or your wife. I was here last year as well. I take all of the bags they will give me, and what I don’t use, I give to my friends. Who would give someone a gift of a bag of dirt? Only me!” Of the five boroughs, Queens has returned the majority of the “black gold” crafted by the Department of Sanitation through its intense composting program. The World’s Borough has passed out more than 1,375,200 pounds of compost between its two collection sites so far this year — making up roughly 28% of the recycled food scraps that the city has passed out for free. The borough itself collects more than the impressive 1,237,200 pounds of compost that the DSNY has handed over directly to community gardens, schools and other nonprofits throughout the city. Staten Island is the only other borough that could give Queens compost lovers a run for their money — 1,135,200 pounds of claimed compost have been picked up from the Staten Island Compost Facility so far this year.

Researchers from India's Homi Bhabha National Institute and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre have demonstrated an efficient route for converting high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic waste into high-quality turbostratic graphene using flash Joule heating (FJH), while directly validating its performance in supercapacitor electrodes. The approach relies on rapid capacitive discharge to drive extremely fast resistive heating of the polymer precursor, reaching temperatures above 2500°C within milliseconds. This ultrafast thermal spike induces carbonization and graphitization in a single step, eliminating the need for external furnaces, catalysts, or solvents. Compared to conventional graphene production routes such as chemical vapor deposition or chemical oxidation, the FJH process is significantly simpler, avoids hazardous chemicals entirely, and reduces both energy consumption and environmental impact. HDPE, a widely used thermoplastic found in packaging and consumer products, represents a major fraction of global plastic waste. Its chemical stability and high molecular weight make it persistent in the environment, contributing to long-term pollution and microplastic formation. Traditional recycling methods often downgrade its value due to polymer degradation, and only a small portion of the more than 400 million tonnes of plastic produced annually is effectively recycled. Converting such waste into graphene offers a compelling upcycling pathway, transforming a low-value pollutant into a high-performance nanomaterial. Material characterization confirms the high quality of the synthesized graphene. Raman spectroscopy shows a high I2D/IG ratio of 1.22 and a low ID/IG ratio of 0.05, indicating well-ordered graphitic domains with minimal defects. Complementary analyses using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) further validate the formation of turbostratic graphene structures. Th...

... FILE - Compost made from decomposed green kitchen scraps, yard litter and garden waste, appears in New Market, Va., on March 8, 2009. (AP ...

During a visit to the Jindal Waste-to-Energy Plant at Kondaveedu in Palnadu district, the Deputy Chief Minister emphasised the need to convert waste into a resource through segregation, processing and energy generation.