Korbinian Kiesl: In difficult economic times, recycling is a reason to invest

Wiring harness clips made of 100 percent ocean plastic used in the Ford Bronco Sport models won an Altair Enlighten Award, while a composite wheel system from Lacks Enterprises takes runner-up position.

U.S. recyclers are willing to do their part to increase recycling rates, but they are currently constrained by available supplies, according to the Association of Plastic Recyclers.

An industry group has challenged Canada's single-use plastics ban in court, arguing that the government hasn't shown products like bags and foodware meet the definition of toxic that it's using to regulate them.

The California legislature is strongly considering a bill that would reduce the amount of single-use plastic packaging for online retail shipped into the state. It would be the first state in the U.S. to do so.

As Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, puts it, our current economy is based on the belief that we can extract resources boundlessly, use them inefficiently, and discard them wantonly, drawing from the planet more than it can regenerate and polluting more than we can clean up.

DuPont Mobility & Materials has further extended its TPC-ET elastomer product family Hytrel with additional sustainable grades, the company said.

CJ Bio, a division of South Korea-based CJ CheilJedang, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the global hotel chain Accor to begin developing packaging and products made from PHA for the hotel amenities the hotel chain provides to its guests.

As the pressure on companies to reduce and report their greenhouse gas emissions rises, new partnerships are being established between manufacturing and climate tech companies in order to achieve this.

The pilot project launched by PepsiCo in February of this year, in which the food and beverage giant aimed to manufacture 830 ecological pallets for use in two of the company's logistics centres, has apparently been a major success.