The final legislative hurdle to creating a more resource efficient Europe has been overcome after the EU Council approved the EU’s Circular Economy Package (CEP) in Brussels on Tuesday.

Supermarket chain Iceland has added another first to its growing list of actions against plastic packaging with the news that it has installed a reverse vending machine for plastic bottles in one of its London stores, the first UK supermarket to do so.

One of the UK’s key plastic bottle producers is set to use 51 per cent recycled content in all its bottles by September and wants to move to 100 per cent.

In a bid to reduce its plastic footprint, the UK Parliament has announced a series of measures aiming to ‘virtually eliminate single-use avoidable plastics’ from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords by 2019.

Bubble wrap-lined envelopes are a staple of every office, but can this form of packaging be effectively recycled, or should alternatives be found?

Paper manufacturer James Cropper has set its sights on recycling some of the 2.5 billion takeaway coffee cups thrown away every year in the UK, partnering with London waste collection company Paper Round.

Six innovative bio-based products using materials including cellulose, soy beans and watermelon sugars are on the shortlist for the 2018 Bio-based Material of the Year award.

Woolcool is a packaging innovation for the transport of temperature-sensitive items from the food and pharmaceutical sectors, using wool in place of polystyrene, bubble wrap, gel packs or other non-recyclable insulating materials.

The announcement this morning (28 March) of plans to introduce a deposit return scheme for drinks containers in England has been hailed as a victory by plastics pollution campaigners, though many within the waste and resources industry have called for caution regarding implementation.

Plastic recycling charity RECOUP has announced it will be holding its Plastics Recycling Conference on 27 September 2018, with the aim of pushing the UK plastics industry to be more proactive in tackling plastic waste.