Nonmetallics

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has signed legislation establishing a plastic bag recycling program in the city.

At the signing, Bloomberg said, "It is important to take as many steps as we can to recycle plastic bags. They are not biodegradable, but instead break down into small pieces that pollute the water and soil. Due to their light weight, plastic bags can easily escape from our sanitation system—even when properly disposed of—winding up in trees, waterways and as litter in our neighborhoods.

"Introductory Number 640-A will require many of New York City’s commercial retailers to establish an in-store recycling program for accepting unwanted plastic carry-out bags and film plastic such as dry cleaning bags," Bloomberg continued.

The legislation, sponsored by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and others, requires large retail outlets in New York City to establish in-store plastic bag recycling programs, inform consumers of the availability of such programs and to offer reusable bags for sale. It applies to stores in the city that use plastic bags and occupy 5,000 or more square feet or have more than five branches operating in New York City.

The grocery store chain Whole Foods Market has announced that it is halting its use of plastic grocery bags at all of its 270 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The company’s goal is to remove all plastic bags from its stores by April 22, 2008.

The company also says it will distribute more than 50,000 reusable shopping bags to customers to celebrate the announcement.

Each store will start to deplete its stocks of disposable plastic grocery bags at its checkouts and will help raise awareness about the benefits of reusable bags. During the next three months, stores will reduce plastic grocery bag inventories and increase selections of reusable bags for purchase.

Sancon Resources Recovery Inc., based in Melbourne, Australia, has announced that its China subsidiary, Sancon Shanghai, has opened a new plant in Nanjing, China.

The Nanjing plant is Sancon’s fifth recycling facility in China. The facility includes a logistic vehicle fleet and recycling capability designed for post-consumer scrap management services.

During the third quarter of 2007, Sancon secured a multi-million dollar waste management contract in China to process its post consumer wastes nationwide.

Nampak Plastics, a United Kingdom-based manufacturer of plastic milk bottles, has agreed to a deal with Irish-owned waste management and recycling company Greenstar that will provide 6,000 metric tons of recycled plastic each year for Nampak’s bottle-making process.

Nampak has a goal of increasing the recycled content in its bottles to 30 percent. The company is developing its own process to turn scrap plastic bottles back into plastics suitable for its milk bottle manufacturing activities.

Greenstar WES Group will produce the HDPE flakes from plastic bottles processed by Greenstar UK’s material recovery facility (MRF) operations, including bottles collected by its recently acquired collection company Verdant Group.