With every eruption, towns such as Giarre experience an average of 12,000 tonnes of ashfall daily, which the wind can transport as far as 800km (497 miles). In July 2024, Catania Sicily's second-largest city, located at the foot of Mount Etna registered 17,000 tonnes of ash daily, which took nearly 10 weeks to collect.
The bags are extremely thin so you can only put so much in there, and you can only put certain things in, but no one seems to adhere to that. As far as I know, there is nothing for food waste. There is no designated bin. In the summer it can be quite foul from the communal bin.
A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade cameras installed by local authorities to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said. The episode was detailed in a Facebook post on the city of Catania's official page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility.
waste stream works differently: used cooking oil. Restaurants, hotels, and food manufacturers produce oil that can be collected through structured channels and handled responsibly, yet many businesses still follow traditional disposal methods. Over the past decade, demand for biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has increased as renewable energy targets have tightened. Used vegetable oil has become an established feedstock. Some businesses are still operating under older assumptions, not fully aware that professional collection provides an efficient and compliant solution for this type of waste.
As a high school student, motivated by the desire to keep useful items out of landfills, William Chui built an online store where users could shop for free, pre-used clothes and household wares. When he arrived at UC Berkeley as a freshman last fall, he learned about the piles of waste generated when students moved out of their dorms which the city then has to contend with.
Nobody wants a landfill in their backyard, which is exactly why the companies that own them print money. The waste management industry is an oligopoly disguised as a utility. Garbage never stops, permits for new landfills are nearly impossible to obtain, and the handful of players controlling North America's disposal infrastructure enjoy pricing power that makes telecom companies jealous. These stocks compound predictably through recessions, inflation cycles, and regulatory shifts.
Meet Eco-C Cube, an eco-friendly construction block built from recycled plastic waste, such as old fishing nets, buoys, agricultural vinyl, mulching film, and other mixed, discarded plastic. The manufacturer Westec Global relies on what it describes as New-Cycling process. Instead of cleaning, sorting, and breaking plastics down into raw polymers, mixed plastic waste is fused directly into usable blocks to preserve the materials' strength and flexibility while avoiding the cost and emissions that are often linked with traditional recycling.
The household burning of plastic for heating and cooking is widespread in developing countries, suggests a global study that raises concerns about its health and environmental impacts. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, surveyed more than 1,000 respondents across 26 countries. One in three people reported being aware of households burning plastic, while 16% said they had burned plastic themselves.
Look at the condition we're living in. I've lived here for 64 years, I came to this country at 16 I've never seen it this bad. I'm sick, he says. I try my best. At the end of the day, I just want my area clean. That's all I want. Piles of bin bags, broken glass and furniture have been dumped on the street outside his home and the mosque next door.
In a letter Dec. 15, Waste Management, one of the nation's largest waste companies, told the state the company would no longer sort cartons out of the waste stream for recycling at its Sacramento facility. Instead, it will send the milk- and food-encrusted packaging to the landfill. Marcus Nettz, Waste Management's director of recycling for Northern California and Nevada, cited concerns from buyers and overseas regulators that cartons - even in small amounts - could contaminate valuable material, such as paper,
Most people assume waste issues start after Christmas, but the rise actually begins a few weeks beforehand. Parcel packaging, wrapping materials and extra food shopping create almost double the usual waste. That is when households are most at risk of these lesser known fines.
Nearly three years after a fire destroyed the Doral incinerator that processed about half of Miami-Dade's trash, county commissioners want to pursue building a new one in an industrial area near the Broward County line. Two teams have been competing to build a replacement facility, and both kept their hopes alive on Tuesday after commissioners voted to consider a combined proposal from the current rivals.
The Environmental Protection Agency slapped Apple with a $261,000 fine last week, accusing the tech giant of mishandling waste at a controversial facility located next to a cluster of Santa Clara apartments. The EPA's order, filed on Oct. 27, said that inspections at the Apple site in 2023 and 2024 revealed violations to California's Health & Safety Code. The issues mostly relate to waste labeling and storage, but Apple is also accused of leaving a waste exhaust vent without a control device,
Waste Management ( NYSE: WM) missed on both earnings and revenue in Q3, posting adjusted EPS of $1.49 against expectations of $2.08 and revenue of $6.44B versus $6.70B estimated. The stock fell 2.35% in after-hours trading, though the decline was modest given the magnitude of the misses. The real pressure comes from guidance. Management now expects full-year revenue at the low end of its prior range, citing declining recycled commodity prices and softer healthcare solutions revenue.
It's designated by the plastic recycling code #6 PS, which (in unexpanded form) you'll find in plastic cups and CD and DVD cases. Here's a sobering fact: Americans dump approximately 1,500 tons of polystyrene in landfills daily, and less than 1% of it is recycled. That recycling rate is particularly disheartening when you consider that EPS is 98% air, making it technically recyclable-yet most communities lack the equipment and infrastructure to process it economically.
Lojan will address the community at the Gerard Carter Center on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event, which is sponsored by Bay Street & Beyond, will focus on the city's ongoing trash containerization program. Residents will be able to ask questions and hear directly from leadership about how the program will impact their communities and improve public spaces.
For decades, our relationship with waste has been defined by disposability and denial. The disposability of everything from coffee cups and cigarette butts to smartphones, and the denial about where it all goes when we're done with it, means that humans generate over 2 billion tons of waste globally each year, with Americans alone throwing away 290 million tons of waste annually.
Our communities rightly expect their streets to be back to normal and ready for business by Tuesday morning after Carnival, and we're very proud to deliver that year in, year out. Revellers enjoy a sun-kissed day at Carnival It's a major operation and I am in awe of the hard-working men and women in our waste crews who work tirelessly through the night to collect the rubbish on Sunday and Monday.
Right now, when city waste collection trucks fill up on their routes, the drivers need to go long distances - sometimes more than 30 miles - to empty out at landfills and composting sites. The transfer station would be closer to the central city, where city sanitation workers would move the loads into much bigger trucks before the long haul.
Experts have noted that overflowing bins and food waste contribute significantly to the growing sizes of rats in urban areas, leading to larger and more difficult-to-manage populations.
