California has entered a new phase of waste reduction as a statewide ban on all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and ...

If you buy a smoothie in Portland, Oregon, the drink might come in a compostable plastic cup, a choice a thoughtful owner might make to make their operations more sustainable. You might think, at a ...

It was hailed as a wonderful thing: During the oil boom in the 1950s, chemists began to render the waste coming out of refineries into plastic — plastic packaging, plastic furniture, plastic fibers ...

Materials scientists are cooking up environmentally friendly polymers from natural sources like silk, plant fibers and whole algae. Economics and acceptance remain hurdles. By Boyce Upholt / Knowable ...

They're often touted as 'eco-friendly', but a new study may have you second guessing buying compostable bags. Sourceful, a Manchester-based sustainable packaging startup, analysed more than 20 ...

Seemingly every corner of our world is now littered with plastics, and only a tiny percentage of it is ever recycled. To mitigate this, many companies are offering items labeled as “compostable” or ...

Most “compostable” plastic won’t break down easily in a backyard compost bin. And the process can take so long at an industrial composting facility that many facilities that take food waste refuse the ...

Plastic cutlery may look pretty innocuous, but it’s one of the worst contributors to the current global waste plastic crisis. In the United States alone, some 40 billion plastic utensils are ...

Leigh Ackland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Most people know by now that the disposable plastic used for take-out food is an environmental hazard. Containers, cups, utensils, straws — very little of it gets recycled and very much of it ends up ...

The bad news from the past year (and there was a lot of it) drowned out much of the GOOD news that made smaller headlines.

In the eagerness to prove the sustainability of plastics, an idea blossomed that somehow someone could turn plastic into soil, mimicking the life cycle of a leaf or grass. Thus began the quest for the ...