High Desert RMDZ

08/30/2026

Building demand for recycled flexibles

Flexible plastics, including food packaging, are among the largest and fastest-growing types of plastic waste, yet less than 5% are currently recycled, according to Delterra and Eunomia. The environmental nonprofit and global sustainability consultancy, respectively, are releasing a new report Wednesday that seeks to bolster that recycling rate.

The report found that companies could readily create demand for up to 800,000 tons of recycled household flexible plastics annually across eight applications. The team found that three uses in particular — industrial liners, impermeable construction membranes and dark-colored trash bags — could account for approximately 600,000 tons per year, or 75% of the total potential of the eight products.

Titled “Building Markets for Recycled Household Flexible Plastics: Identifying the End Uses Needed to Meet EPR Goals,” the report was funded by Amcor and Kraft Heinz.

Shannon Bouton, president and CEO of Delterra and one of the report’s authors, said, “You have to have demand for that material in order to create the incentive for all the rest of it to happen — the collection, the sortation, and so on.”

Bouton said the rapid rise of extended producer responsibility (EPR) around the world presents an opportunity and a challenge for flexible plastics. EPR can provide funding to help offset the costs of recycling. But it can also end up with a lot more material collected — material that needs some place to go.

In the case of California, Senate Bill 54 sets out a 65% recycling rate target by 2032 for single-use plastics, yet less than 5% of flexible plastics in the state are recycled today. “Closing this gap over the coming five years will require not only expanded collection and sorting, but also robust demand to use the recycled material in new applications,” the report authors wrote.

Bouton explained that flexibles have been particularly challenging to recycle because they are often contaminated with food or have paints or dyes on them. Flexibles can be made up of different resins and are often mixed with other materials like metals or fiber. Many recyclers have long said films and other flexibles can gum up their machinery. In part because of the challenges, Delterra and Eunomia found that there are fewer than 30 North American reclaimers that can mechanically recycle PE film.

“There’s no reason for those recyclers to exist because there just hasn’t been a lot of that material flowing through the system, and there hasn’t been a lot of demand for it,” said Bouton. “That is going to be a significant bottleneck when you start to see EPR come into play in places like California and other states.”

In order to assess the potential demand, Bouton and colleagues interviewed recyclers in Europe and other countries. They evaluated more than 40 potential applications for recycled household polyethylene film, from flower pots to car parts, from shrink film to buckets. They looked for technical feasibility and uses that aren’t already robust in the market (omitting plastic lumber, asphalt additives and roof coverboard).

They found these eight uses to be the most promising:

-Horticulture liners, trays and plastic pots

-Rigid consumables (e.g. housewares)

-Transit packaging pallets

-Rotational-molded items (e.g. consumer goods, large containers, trash bins)

-Industrial liners (e.g. pond liners, landfill liners)

-Impermeable construction membranes

-Agricultural heavy-duty covers

-Dark-colored trash bags

These eight identified uses share some similarities: they are generally not food-contact-sensitive, they can tolerate color variation and imperfections, and they are more forgiving of variability in resin composition. They include a mix of injection-molded rigid products and thicker-gauge, mixed-color film applications.

Bouton said the next step is to test how these recycled products perform in the real world, and in particular, in North America, where there might be subtle differences with Europe or other markets.

She added that one misconception she often encounters is that the recycled product needs to have price parity with virgin material. “Actually it needs to be significantly cheaper than virgin in order to generate that demand for it,” she said.

“The hardest part of building markets for recycled materials isn’t ambition – it’s honestly assessing what’s technically and economically feasible and being willing to follow the evidence where it leads,” said Sarah Edwards, North America director and private lead for Eunomia, in a statement.

“Recycling only happens really in truth if the material makes it back into a new product,” said Bouton.

Learn more: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2026/08/25/building-demand-for-recycled-flexibles/

A new report from Delterra and Eunomia found that companies could readily create demand for up to 800,000 tons of recycled household flexible plastics annually across eight applications.

08/29/2026

California compostables bills, opposed by BPI, won't advance - Packaging Dive

BPI has considered legislative fixes in California and petitioned USDA for action. Recommended Reading. California advances compostables, recycled ...

Learn more: https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.packagingdive.com/news/california-compostables-plastics-bills-bpi/827988/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyHGY3ZmNjODAxYTMxMDJlNjY6Y29tOmVuOlVTOlI&usg=AOvVaw2uzp2aC5dlAazKorzriQIE

“This is a major, but short-term, accomplishment in California,” said BPI Executive Director Rhodes Yepsen. Also this summer, USDA previewed plans to potentially update organics regulations.

08/28/2026

PET in focus: Is help on the way? - Resource Recycling

California market payments progress State-level PCR mandates too new to evaluate India may provide look at future The past few

Source: PET in focus: Is help on the way? - Resource Recycling

California market payments progress State-level PCR mandates too new to evaluate India may provide look at future  The past few

08/27/2026

Compostable Product Bills Held Back in California | BioCycle

Two bills that would have reshaped the compostable product landscape in California failed to pass through the state legislature’s fiscal choke point.

Source: Compostable Product Bills Held Back in California | BioCycle

08/26/2026

PET Thermoform Recovery Hits Record, But Circularity Lags | Packaging World

PET thermoform recovery reached 264M lb in 2024, but recycled content use fell to 12%. Discover why the circularity gap is widening despite record collection.

Source: PET Thermoform Recovery Hits Record, But Circularity Lags | Packaging World

PET thermoform recovery reached 264M lb in 2024, but recycled content use fell to 12%. Discover why the circularity gap is widening despite record collection.

08/20/2026

Secondary Glass Processing Vital to California EPR Compliance for All Materials, Study Confirms - Waste Advantage Magazine

A study by the Plastics Forming Enterprises (PFE) sorted and characterized plastics materials found in the glass commodity stream from glass processing

Source: Secondary Glass Processing Vital to California EPR Compliance for All Materials, Study Confirms - Waste Advantage Magazine

A  study by the Plastics Forming Enterprises (PFE) sorted and characterized plastics materials found in the glass commodity stream from glass processing

08/19/2026

APR launches packaging recyclability assessment tool

The APR Design Assessment Tool allows companies to assess the technical recyclability of plastic packaging.

The APR Design Assessment Tool allows companies to assess the technical recyclability of plastic packaging.

08/18/2026

Revino gets grant to expand reusable wine bottles into CA

Revino is expanding its reusable wine bottle network into California after securing a $4.8 million CalRecycle grant, a move that could expand reuse infrastructure on the West Coast.

The Oregon-based startup will use the funding to build a commercial bottle-washing facility in Lompoc, California, capable of cleaning up to 10 million glass beverage containers annually. The facility will allow Revino to serve California wineries while reducing transportation emissions associated with shipping bottles back to Oregon. As the nation’s largest wine-producing state, California represents a significant opportunity to scale reusable glass packaging.

Founded in 2022, Revino has developed a standardized reusable wine bottle system designed to keep glass in circulation rather than sending it through the traditional recycling stream. Instead of crushing bottles after a single use, consumers return the distinctive rippled glass containers to collection sites, where they are inspected, washed, sanitized and redistributed to wineries for refilling. The company currently partners with approximately 120 wine brands, with around 90 wineries in Oregon and Washington already bottling wine in Revino containers.

The expansion comes as interest grows in reuse systems that reduce waste before it enters the recycling stream. According to Revino, each bottle is designed to be reused up to 50 times, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 85% compared with single-use bottles. The company estimates that a bottle becomes carbon neutral after just three reuse cycles.

Consumer participation is critical to the system’s success. More than 100 collection locations across the Pacific Northwest, including every New Seasons Market store, allow customers to return empty Revino bottles. The regional grocery chain partnered with Revino to make bottle returns more convenient while encouraging customers through its Neighbor Rewards program, which awards 10 points for every bottle returned.

Athena Petty, senior sustainability manager at New Seasons Market, said the retailer views reuse as part of its broader sustainability strategy.

“The holy grail of where we’re heading to, of course, is really circularity,” said Petty.

Petty said New Seasons had followed Revino’s progress for several years before launching the partnership and saw an opportunity to make reusable packaging more accessible for customers.

“We wanted to create an easier way for customers to have a place to return the Revino bottles,” she said.

Customer participation has remained modest, though Petty said the results are in line with expectations. She said roughly 4% of customers who purchase Revino wines currently return their bottles.

“It’s around what we expected this early on, since we know it’s a behavior change program,” she said.

Rather than viewing the return rate as a setback, New Seasons sees it as a sign that changing long-standing consumer habits will take time. The retailer is developing additional shelf signage, marketing campaigns and social media outreach to educate shoppers about the program while evaluating additional ways to encourage participation.

Revino’s California expansion will also broaden its winery partnerships. The company is already in discussions with Silver Oak and Treasury Wine Estates, which could significantly increase the number of reusable bottles circulating throughout the West Coast wine industry.

Company leaders have also said the reusable bottle model could eventually expand beyond wine into other glass beverage containers. If successful, the project could demonstrate how state investment in reuse infrastructure can complement recycling by preventing waste before it is created.

Learn more: https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2026/08/05/revino-gets-grant-to-expand-reusable-wine-bottles-into-ca/

The Oregon-based startup will use the funding to build a commercial bottle-washing facility in Lompoc, California.

08/17/2026

What producers got wrong about SB 54’s 25% target

California’s source reduction plans were due Aug. 1, but according to rePurpose Global’s Alyssa Dizon, the filing deadline was the easy part. What happens over the next six years is where producers should be paying attention.

Dizon, head of product at rePurpose Global, spoke with Resource Recycling about what’s driving the crunch behind source reduction plans, why the 25% reduction target is being widely misread and why she expects the compliance burden to get harder as California’s program matures through 2032.

rePurpose Global builds software that automates packaging EPR compliance for producers. Dizon’s team also runs the company’s regulatory and sustainability intelligence unit, which tracks legislative and rulemaking activity across every state EPR program and feeds it into the platform.

A five-year plan

Source reduction plans mark the first time a packaging EPR program has asked producers to project forward rather than report backward, Dizon said.

“This is the first time that they’re being required to think about what their packaging will look like in the coming years, and project the impact of those changes to their plastic contributions in California,” she said.

That shift landed on top of an already difficult May supply-reporting deadline, leaving producers just 60 days to turn around a five-year forecast. Dizon said this requires mapping packaging changes against five separate reduction pathways while digesting guidance that kept shifting underneath them.

“They are definitely scrambling,” she said. “CAA just launched — or just announced — new guidance last week, just two weeks before the source reduction plans are due.”

The most persistent confusion Dizon sees isn’t about methodology, but rather what the law actually requires of any single company.

“The most common misconception is that the 25% reduction is an individual producer requirement,” she said.

SB 54’s reduction target applies collectively across CAA’s entire producer base, not to each company’s own packaging.

“The source reduction planning exercise is really a data collection process for CAA to get a forecast, essentially, from all producers of what they think is realistic, given the current draft incentives and draft fees and constraints on supply chain.”

Producers who believe they must show 25% reduction on paper to keep selling in California, she said, are operating on a false premise.

Despite active litigation, including the federal suit brought by the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a separate suit from Oceana, NRDC and Californians Against Waste, Dizon said producers aren’t slowing down or hedging.

“They’re largely moving ahead,” she said. “I think that these legal actions are expected and part of the normal legislative process, where different stakeholders have different opinions and want to shape the future of the policy, but none of that has fundamentally changed what the requirements are.”

Compounding complexities

Dizon doesn’t expect the reporting burden to ease as California’s program matures — she expects the opposite, driven by annual bonus-and-malus recalibration and a growing, unharmonized patchwork of state programs.

“I think that the complexity will get harder,” she said. “More states are coming on board and they are not harmonized. On the source reduction front specifically for California, this initial plan… is just the tip of the spear. There is an annual progress report in California every year through the 2032 reporting cycle… the bonuses and maluses themselves are what are going to actually drive behavior, and the bonuses and maluses themselves will change.”

Her advice to producers is to sequence packaging changes by certainty — executing low-hanging fruit immediately while running parallel R&D tracks for changes that depend on future material availability or pricing.

Dizon pushed back on the assumption that meeting SB 54 automatically prepares producers for other state programs, including newer ones in Illinois and Maryland.

“California is the most different,” she said. “Colorado and Oregon are a lot more similar, and California is different than both of them… California has 95 reporting categories, whereas Colorado only had 60.”

Other states rely on voluntary eco-modulation bonuses rather than California’s mandatory source reduction mandate, she noted, and deadlines vary in ways producers can miss. Maine’s supply reports, for instance, aren’t due until later this year and a date hadn’t yet been announced, unlike the May 31 deadline most other states shared.

She also flagged a common misread of California’s fee schedule. The early fees the state charged to fund program startup are lower than what producers should expect to pay annually going forward.

“The early fees are significantly lower than your regular annual fees,” she said. “They just need startup costs funded for the program in California. Not all the states are doing that.”

Dizon closed by framing the source reduction plan as a starting point rather than a compliance finish line.

“This plan is a one-time exercise, tip of the spear,” she said. “It’s meant to catalyze forecasting, and it’s meant to help you as a producer, gather your team internally to really look around the corner, see what’s coming and make smart decisions.”

Executing on source reduction and responding to California’s evolving fee incentives, she said, “is going to be a multi-year, ongoing iterative project. So, the plan is just the beginning.”

Learn more: https://resource-recycling.com/policy-now/2026/08/03/what-producers-got-wrong-about-sb-54s-25-target/

rePurpose Global's Alyssa Dizon says the most common mistake producers make is treating a collective reduction goal as an individual mandate.

08/16/2026

Plastics contamination an ‘overlooked’ concern in food waste schemes, experts say | Food waste | The Guardian

Researchers find microplastics can persist in compost, leaching into agricultural soils

Source: Plastics contamination an ‘overlooked’ concern in food waste schemes, experts say | Food waste | The Guardian

Source: Plastics contamination an ‘overlooked’ concern in food waste schemes, experts say | Food waste | The Guardian