When I visited my friend in Scotland, I was amazed to see how little waste from her family of four actually went into the garbage can. Besides their good habits of buying items with minimal packaging, ...

Recycling rates were recently released at the Plastics Recycling Conference showing that despite advancements in the industry, the numbers have plenty of room for improvement. Senior reporter Jim ...

At the Republic Services Recycling Center on Cole Road, waste whirs on a conveyor belt past workers who scramble to pull contaminants off the line. Trash goes in barrels at the workers’ sides, and ...

It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment. “It’s crazy what we’re doing. It’s very, very, very bad,” she says in ABC’s prime-time ...

The plastics industry is backing new federal legislation that includes provisions favorable to chemical recycling and that would set a national standard of 30 percent recycled content in plastic ...

In Seattle, as in most cities around the country, there are a number of items that you aren’t supposed to put in the curbside recycling bin: bubble wrap, for instance, or multilayer plastic packaging ...

Plastic has many benefits, but recycling it has many challenges, including energy and emissions. Plastic is cheap, lightweight, strong and versatile, so we use it in millions of products. But there ...

The EU is preparing stricter customs controls and new codes to prevent virgin plastic from being labeled as recycled.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Blackmon is a Texas-based public policy analyst/consultant. Plastics are an indispensable, ubiquitous part of modern society ...