The machines use gravity to sort different types of paper like newspaper, magazines, and office paper. However, other materials like plastic bags often get mixed in with people's recycling and get ...

Plastic bag policies led to a 25% to 47% reduction in the amount of disposable, thin plastic bag litter on America's shorelines, the study found.

A machine learning (ML) program was then trained on this data, and subsequently employed to look at and sort individual pieces of plastic waste.

More than 600 bag policies, along with records from more than 45,000 shoreline cleanups between 2017 and 2023, were reviewed by researchers to see whether implementing bans or fees on plastic bags ...

Nine years ago California banned grocery stores from giving out flimsy single-use plastic grocery bags, the first state to do so. And the law has been facing obstacles ever since. Days after it ...

The ban also does not apply to plastic bags provided by pharmacies to carry prescription drugs; bags for dry cleaning or laundry from a laundromat or bags used for ice machines. How long with the ban ...

Plastic bags can easily get caught in sorting machines, causing a recycling plant's entire operation to temporarily shut down while workers remove them. My business has a ton of leftover plastic bags.

Thorvalson noted that in 2023, the aquarium documented 875 plastic retail bags on the Charleston peninsula during litter sweeps. Many of these, she said, were the thicker "reusable" plastic bags.