John Mullinder
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The more plastics you add to Ontario’s Blue Box, the more it costs
It’s easy to describe plastics as the problem child of the Ontario Blue Box. Just look at the chart below. Its generation continues to increase; its volume fills trucks and landfills; its net cost to recycle is more than three…
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Retailers urged to “follow the science” on sanitisation
The corrugated box industry is just fear-mongering about food safety, according to the reusable crate lobby, which has obviously been stung by the release of yet another study questioning whether, and how well, crates are being cleaned between uses. The…
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Getting the facts straight on packaging diversion in Canada
In the course of an otherwise interesting article on Individual Producer Responsibility (IPR), Tom Chervinsky makes a statistical boo-boo. See, I am mellowing. I didn’t call it package bashing. Chervinsky is certainly not the first, and won’t be the last,…
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PPEC celebrates its 25th anniversary in style
Apart from breaking out the bubbly and destroying a cake, PPEC members and friends celebrated the environmental council’s 25th anniversary last week with the release of three warmly received videos. PPEC: The Early Years PPEC: History of Achievement PPEC’s Role…
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Industry well on the way to solving the waxed box issue
Although relatively few corrugated boxes have wax applied to them (about 3% of all corrugated produced), they have long been a “problem” material when it comes to recycling. Those days may be numbered. Wax coatings have traditionally been applied as…
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We don’t cut down trees just because paper is in the landfill
A slide shown at the Conference on Canadian Stewardship in Banff last week claimed a direct connection between paper ending up in landfill and the need to harvest fresh trees. There is none, as far as paper packaging in Canada…
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Key decisions looming on Canada’s Blue Box EPR programs
North America’s first full producer responsibility EPR program for the Blue Box has been running for over a year now in British Columbia, with positive results. Will Ontario and the other provinces follow suit? Will they have the political wherewithal…
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Meeting the demand for simple, concise factsheets
Anyone who has had anything to do with websites knows that they are much like airports, constantly under construction. We have four terminals, as it were, and it is a constant effort to ensure that the environmental information we post…
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The future of paper packaging
Yes, it has one! PPEC is pleased to announce the impressive line-up for its upcoming October 28th event on the Future of Packaging. Confirmed speakers include: Dan Lantz, COO of Green by Nature, the company coordinating the processing of printed…
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“Plastic still the future,” according to Canadian Packaging magazine
The plastics industry is besieged on multiple fronts and widely depicted as the “archetypical eco-villain of the modern world,” according to the editor of Canadian Packaging magazine. He then latches onto an American Chemical Council study that purports to show…
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