#aviation-recycling

#aviation-recycling

Ascend Elements has started Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S., a heavy blow to investors who had sunk nearly $900 million into the company.

Airlines in Europe are bracing for fuel supply shocks caused by the war in the Middle East. The severity of the impacts on passengers will be determined in the coming days and weeks depending on whether a recently announced ceasefire between the United States and Iran holds.

The #6 symbol on the foam container only tells you what kind of plastic it is, not if it can be recycled. If you put it in the bin just because you see a number and the recycling arrows, it can actually contaminate your other recyclables, like paper, cardboard, and aluminum, and might cause the whole batch to be rejected.

Joby Aviation and Air Space Intelligence announced a partnership to integrate AI-driven airspace management into U.S. electric air taxi operations, using ASI's Flyways AI platform to model high-density eVTOL traffic before commercial flights begin later this year.

"Planning a sustainable wedding starts with prioritising what's important to you and shutting out the consumerist noise. That way, from the get-go you have a guiding principle that informs each decision."

tozero's proprietary acid-free hydrometallurgical process runs in a single cycle and produces materials pure enough to feed directly back into battery cell manufacturing without further refinement.

Shredded paper is especially difficult to recycle, so many programs will not accept it. Shredding accelerates fiber shortening and lowers the paper grade from high-grade to mixed-grade. Mixed-grade paper is still recyclable, but it ends up baled and processed into products like paper towels and packing paper.

Heathrow's annual sustainability report summarizing the year 2025 describes climate change as "an existential threat to aviation, to the planet and to us all personally." The report touts a few areas of interest, including adding zero-emission buses to the airport's fleet and reducing overall waste at Heathrow by 3%. The report also points to Heathrow using more sustainable jet fuel, with 3.1% of the flights taking off from the airport making use of such materials.

While you might assume that potato chip bags or other snack bags are recyclable, most are made from mixed materials. This means that the bags may contain plastic on the outside and an inner lining of plastic and aluminum film or foil. While the individual materials may be recyclable on their own, the only way they could be used is if the recycling facility has the means by which to separate the materials.

This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture. A team led by designer Dinorah Schulte created corncretl during a residency last year in Massa Lombarda, Italy.

According to the UN's Global E-waste Monitor 2024, a record 62 million metric tons of electronic waste was generated worldwide in 2022, an 82% increase since 2010. E-waste is projected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030. In the U.S. alone, roughly 8 million tons of e-waste is discarded each year.

Never place batteries of any type in your curbside recycling bin. Batteries can damage recycling equipment and, if lithium batteries are mixed in, cause fires. Always use designated battery collection programs.

Just like that coffee cup, eyewear is a complex fusion of materials. Metal hinges are screwed into polymer frames, which hold chemically-coated lenses. This mix of metals, plastics, and coatings means standard sorting machines cannot process them. As a result, they are rejected as contamination and sent directly to landfills, where they contribute to non-biodegradable waste. Unlike a disposable paper cup, however, a pair of sunglasses is built for durability. Its high-quality components make it a perfect candidate for repair, reuse, or reinvention.

We can make changes to reduce our waste by precycling when we shop, reducing what we purchase, reusing items to get the most use out of them, and recycling when possible. But when we have items to throw away, please dispose of trash responsibly and don't litter. Let's reduce our waste and clean up our planet. It's our only home.

Europe's supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum. Brands using plastic packaging from Kraft's Heinz Beanz to Mondelez's Philadelphia use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world's largest corporate greenhouse-gas emitter (over 70m tonnes up to 2023).

One of the earliest large-scale examples of composite materials can be found in the Great Wall of China, where stone, clay bricks, and organic fibers such as reeds and willow branches were blended to create a resilient and lasting structure. These early techniques reveal a timeless intuition: distinct materials, when combined thoughtfully, produce properties unattainable by any single element.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are found in many devices we use every day, like smartphones, laptops, tablets, wireless earbuds, power tools, e-bikes, and electric vehicles. By 2023, there were more than 40 million electric vehicles on the road worldwide, and billions of portable electronics used Li-ion cells. These batteries are valuable for recycling, but they can be dangerous if not disposed of correctly.

When you think about building a house, what materials come to mind? Brick, wood and metal all come to mind; there are also some very distinctive glass houses out there. (Even if their occupants should refrain from throwing stones - though honestly, that's a good tip for indoor living in general.) A group of MIT researchers have come up with a very different way of making buildings, and it's one that also addresses an ongoing waste issue."We've estimated that the world needs about 1 billion new homes by 2050. If we try to make that many homes using wood, we would need to clear-cut the equivalent of the Amazon rainforest three times over," explained AJ Perez, who conducts his research in the MIT Office of Innovation. The title of a paper written by Perez and his colleagues - "Design, Manufacture and Testing of Structural Trusses Using Additively Manufactured Polymer Composites" - gives a sense of the solution that they have in mind.