#waste-management

#waste-management

Before a building can be inhabited, many other things need to happen. Water has to arrive, energy has to be generated, food has to be grown or transported, and waste has to go somewhere. These processes are usually treated as something outside architecture, even though they shape the most basic conditions of everyday life.

Plastic food wrappers, bottles, lids and caps are by far the most common items of litter found on the world's shorelines, a study has found. Researchers looked at data from more than 5,300 surveys of coastal litter to produce the first global analysis of its kind. They found the data in 355 existing studies on the subject. It's the everyday stuff that we're using, said Richard Thompson, the founder of the University of Plymouth's international marine litter research unit.

As dusk falls, when the European Union offices begin to empty out, dozens, even hundreds, of colorful garbage bags sprout up on the streets of Brussels. Some stand in geometrically neat rows in front of houses. Others, half-open, spill out a slice of pizza, a dirty diaper, a pile of cardboard, or the potato peelings someone has just discarded.

"Leave it better than you found it is a really powerful mantra. It speaks not only to refuse pick up but just as a reminder to breathe deep, listen closely, stop time for just a moment and enjoy the surrounding."

Compostable packaging is a type of biodegradable packaging designed to break down alongside natural waste. It's usually made of plant-based materials, like corn syrup, cellulose, or paper, that decompose without leaving toxins behind.

The #6 symbol on the foam container only tells you what kind of plastic it is, not if it can be recycled. If you put it in the bin just because you see a number and the recycling arrows, it can actually contaminate your other recyclables, like paper, cardboard, and aluminum, and might cause the whole batch to be rejected.

For every final barrel of bourbon produced, there are six to ten times that number of barrels of wasted stillage. This waste is often sold to farmers as livestock feed or soil additives, but drying it out is expensive and transportation is difficult.

We expect to grow free cash flow by nearly 30% at the midpoint of our guidance. This growth is underpinned by our unreplicable solid waste network as well as the intentional investments we have made in recycling and renewable energy projects. - Jim Fish, CEO Waste Management

By bricking your plastic, the company claims it'll no longer jam recycling equipment the way individual plastic bags often do. Just feed your plastics into this 61-pound bin and watch them magically disappear into its whirring slot. Wait for it to spit out a brick weeks later, drop it into a supplied bag, and let the US Postal Service whisk your guilt away.

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.

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.

We expect this approach to gaining broader index inclusion will increase GFL's visibility with investors and ultimately drive a wider shareholder base,

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,

Think about how you currently handle waste. Are your team members spending valuable work hours making multiple trips to the local dump? Are they bagging up endless amounts of waste, or worse, dealing with overflowing bins? Every minute they spend on these tasks is a minute they aren't spending on revenue-generating activities, serving customers, or doing the specialised work you hired them for.

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.

We hope this film can be broadcast out to the Vietnamese American community, many of whom, just like our family, lost everything,

On Thursday, our friends at Transportation Alternatives got into the act, laying out in 85 chunky bullet points, how Mayor Mamdani should expand daylighting, build more bike lanes, create bus rapid transit, expand Summer Streets, widen sidewalks and create car-free streets, reduce the city speed limit, broaden the scope of the next Streets Master Plan, make outdoor dining year-round, and reboot Vision Zero, among many, many, many other things.

Waste Management of Alameda County is suing Oakland in Alameda County Superior Court over a complex contractual dispute with millions at stake. Oakland has used Waste Management to collect trash for many years. In 2015, the city inked a deal with the company to collect and process trash and compost from residences and businesses. The City Council selected a different firm, California Waste Solutions, to handle recycling.

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.

This isn't just poor management, it's a system that never really worked,

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.