AGP Executive Report

Local Services: Grant County’s Solid Waste Board says a state review backs its position against the Fiscal Court’s plan to dissolve it. Northeast Frontier Railway has added cleaning, washroom upkeep and waste collection services to five trains. In Lagos, LAWMA deployed 25 trucks to clear Oshodi refuse and distributed 59 recycling bins to an estate. Food Waste: Test Valley’s food-waste scheme helped cut household rubbish by 18%, with residents recycling 4,000 tonnes of food scraps. A £25 million food-waste plant has also won approval in the UK, while a Dar es Salaam campaign is promoting market scraps as compost feedstock. Recycling Investment: Plastipak opened a €25 million PET materials centre in Italy, and Republic Services broke ground on a new recycling centre in Missouri. E-Waste: IGAD is urging East African countries to act as global discarded electronics reach an estimated 62 billion kilos; free collection drives are also planned in Ireland and India.

Food Waste: Wiltshire Council approved a £25 million anaerobic digestion plant near Royal Wootton Bassett, designed to process up to 100,000 tonnes of food and liquid waste a year into biogas and fertiliser, despite concerns about odour, traffic and air quality. Collection Disruption: Havering residents face possible bin delays as FCC Waste Management workers plan a five-day strike from October 26 over pay, staffing, workloads and vehicle safety. Oil Reuse: A new Pukekohe facility is re-refining used oil into base oil for new lubricants, turning a material previously burned for fuel back into a reusable resource. Recycling Services: North Yorkshire may review recycling banks beyond Malton after approving their phased removal there; collections at the sites fell 37% in a year as kerbside services expanded. E-Waste: Argentina generates an estimated 517,000 tonnes of electronic waste annually, but formal recovery captures only 3%, underscoring the need for better collection and recycling systems. City Waste Skills: Hyderabad’s Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation and the Administrative Staff College of India signed an agreement to train officials in more sustainable, circular urban waste management.

Delhi Waste Push: The city says it generates 15,000 tonnes of waste daily and is rolling out collection vehicles and 1,000 mechanical litter pickers across its wards; 50 machines are in the first phase. Recycled Packaging: Plastipak opened a €25 million PET center in Italy, producing resin with 30% recycled content for use in existing packaging lines. Illegal Dumping: Jamaica’s solid waste agency is recruiting more than 100 enforcement officers, with police-led training due to begin in November. Plastic Credits: An Israeli company has approval to issue credits for collected and recycled plastic, though questions remain over whether the market will drive additional cleanup. E-Waste and Pollution: A Saint Lucia community drive collected about 475 pounds of electronics for recycling, while a decade of beach monitoring in Buenos Aires has catalogued more than 280,000 litter items.

Recycling Capacity: Republic Services has begun building a Missouri facility designed to sort up to 45 tons of recyclables an hour, serving about 3 million people when it opens in 2028. Food Waste: Staunton is expanding its composting program after a successful pilot; Test Valley reports 4,000 tonnes of food waste recycled and household rubbish down 18%. Circular Economy: Jammu and Kashmir has unveiled a ₹3,549-crore circular economy roadmap, while a report warns that waste-management gaps persist across Assam’s 104 urban bodies. Waste-to-Fuel: A Bolivian farmer is turning discarded plastic, tires and used oil into fuel, producing up to 150 litres a day and cutting farm costs. Battery Recovery: Singapore startup NEU Battery Materials raised US$7.6 million to scale lithium-battery recycling. Textile Waste: The UK is launching a textile collection and recycling programme, as a proposed facility aims to process 19,200 tonnes of textile waste annually. Fly-Tipping: A Swindon council motion calls for targeted prevention, including surveillance, better lighting and supervised community skips, alongside clean-ups.

Local Recycling: Columbia has opened a second free glass drop-off site, while Wawa plans to launch curbside recycling on Nov. 17, with collections every other week. Battery Recovery: UK recycler Recyclus landed its largest contract yet, a three-year deal to process EV batteries. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute also report that materials upcycled from mixed battery waste produced pouch cells that outlasted commercial counterparts. Organics: Rotorua diverted 180 tonnes of food and garden waste from landfill in the first two weeks of its new collection service, sending it for processing into energy and fertiliser. E-Waste: Africa generated about 3.5 million tonnes of electronic waste in 2022, but less than 1% was documented as formally collected and recycled; experts see digital tracking and better integration of informal collectors as part of the response. Recycling Markets: Industry discussion points to weak end-market demand as a key obstacle, underscoring that collection and sorting alone cannot make recycling systems work.

Waste-to-Energy: Organic Recycling Systems has won a fifth contract from Bharat Petroleum to build and operate a municipal-waste biogas plant in Bhilai. In Dorset, a new £20 million food-waste facility will produce enough gas to heat about 7,000 homes. City Services: Delhi’s lieutenant governor has called for better waste segregation and cleaner streets in Old Delhi, while Kathmandu warned collection will be disrupted for four days during Dashain. Recycling Investment: Plaswire is exploring a Highland facility to turn wind-turbine blades and other plastics into reusable material, with around 70 jobs expected. Hazardous Waste: Regulators approved a major increase in battery storage at a Workington site—from under 50 tonnes to as much as 5,000—while cutting its permitted annual waste intake from 70,000 to 25,000 tonnes. Waste Plans Under Scrutiny: Cebu City’s mayor outlined the supplier’s case for a P470 million processing system but stopped short of backing the price as the city seeks alternatives to landfill.

Clean Fleets: Michigan is offering up to $4.29 million to help communities replace diesel refuse and recycling trucks with battery-electric vehicles and charging equipment, cutting neighborhood pollution. Battery Recovery: Malaysia reported 13,743 tonnes of regulated vehicle-battery waste generated from 2021 to 2025. Seven recovery facilities handle the waste, recovering materials including lithium, nickel and cobalt; the figure is not specific to EV batteries. Waste Services: London Luton Airport has renewed Cawleys’ waste contract for five years, with plans for solar-powered compactors, reusable cups and better tracking of passenger waste. Disposal Decisions: Montgomery County is weighing whether to close its aging Dickerson incinerator and send non-recyclable waste to out-of-county landfills, while Green Isle has delayed a waste contract decision to seek a lower rate increase and remove automatic extensions.

Enforcement: Salford’s Kenny Waste Management site must clear waste from a problem area by Nov. 13 after 52 odour complaints in 10 days; the Environment Agency has also restricted some operations and ordered monitoring. Plastic Policy: Kyrgyzstan will ban certain plastic products and bags from January 2027, while urging businesses to develop alternatives and expand recycling. Food Waste: Australian hospitality businesses discard 1.2 million tonnes of food a year, costing the sector an estimated $6.4 billion; one Sydney pub cut collections and saved about $5,000 annually by finding new uses for food scraps and spent grain. E-Waste: EU collection still lags behind the volume of electronics sold, with Cyprus recording the bloc’s lowest collection rate in 2024 at 4.7 kg per person. Recycling Investment: Circulate Capital is backing Indonesian recycler Bumi Baru Plastic as it moves to an industrial site and targets a fivefold increase in capacity. Zero Waste: Demolition has begun at Washington, D.C.’s Benning Road transfer station ahead of a new campus designed to help divert 80% of the city’s waste from landfills.

E-Waste Gap: Eurostat says the EU put 32kg of electrical and electronic equipment per person on the market in 2024, but collected just 12kg per person for recycling or disposal. NGOs want stronger collection and reuse rules as cheap “fast tech” gadgets add to the waste stream. Battery Fire Risk: A lithium-ion battery ignited in a lorry entering an Essex recycling centre, the latest of two fires there. Operators warn batteries should go to dedicated collection points, not household bins. Battery Recycling: Singapore startup NEU Battery Materials raised US$7.6 million to scale lithium-iron-phosphate battery recycling. India’s N.A.N. Silox GreenMet is advancing plans for a battery recycling plant and cathode materials production. Waste Diversion: One council reports residents recycled 4,000 tonnes of food waste in a year, cutting household rubbish by 18%; the waste is turned into biogas and fertiliser. Textile Waste: A proposed US bill would set a national strategy and improve data collection to tackle fashion waste.

E-Waste: New Zealand generates an estimated 99,000 tonnes of electronic waste a year, but only about 2% enters tracked recycling channels. TechCollect NZ is calling for a permanent, producer-funded national scheme. Circular Materials: A new UK–India partnership, backed by £2.9 million, will fund research into recycled materials and critical-mineral recovery. Battery Safety: Glasgow campaigners want dedicated battery bins after a spate of collection-truck fires; Auckland Council has also warned of 28 battery-related fires. Recycling Investment: Enva is putting £9.5 million into UK fridge-recycling infrastructure, while Republic Services is backing a California compost facility designed to process 147,000 tonnes annually. Waste Pressure: Ireland’s watchdog urges more reuse and recycling after waste grew by a fifth in a decade. In Orange County, a landfill workers’ strike is raising concerns about collection services.

Food Waste: Albuquerque Public Schools has begun composting scraps from its central kitchen, diverting about 1,680 pounds from landfill in its first three weeks. Recycling Investment: Enva is spending £9.5 million on a new fridge-recycling line in Grantham, adding 8,000 tonnes of annual capacity and helping keep recovered materials in the UK. Battery Safety: Auckland Council says batteries were linked to 28 fires at its recycling facility and collection trucks over the past year, and urges residents to keep them out of household bins. Service Disruption: More than 465 Orange County workers, including landfill staff, have gone on strike over contract negotiations, with potential effects on landfill operations and public services. Waste Innovation: Researchers report that industrial by-products can be turned into materials that capture CO₂ and help convert it into a useful chemical.

Textile Waste: London charity shops say they are swamped with low-quality clothing donations, with one hospice shop receiving 30–50 bags a day as shoppers sell their best items online. Illegal Dumping: Police are investigating an industrial-scale fly-tip of rubble, pipes and clothing at a nature reserve near Wyre Forest; Forestry England says cleanup will be costly. Landfill Fires: Residents near Johannesburg’s Kya Sands site report smoke and breathing problems a year into a R150-million rehabilitation project. The city says it has removed 98,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste. Collection & Recycling: Kennewick is replacing open recycling bins with carts that hold five times more, while Panchkula plans four-stream collection to separate waste at source. Waste-sector Deal: EQT’s non-binding proposal for Australian operator Cleanaway remains subject to due diligence, with no binding agreement yet.

Landfill Fire Safety: A lithium-ion battery sparked a 1.5-acre fire at a Michigan landfill, prompting officials to warn residents to take used batteries to recycling or hazardous-waste sites, not household bins. Granite Waste: Prakasam district in India has asked CSIR-AMPRI to find ways to turn quarry slurry and solid waste into construction materials and reclaim polluted land around Chimakurthy. Scrap Supply: New EU restrictions on waste exports to non-OECD countries could tighten metal-scrap supplies and raise costs for Gujarat’s recyclers and manufacturers from 2027. Textile Recycling: WRAP has launched a UK programme to expand textile collection and recycling as the country tackles clothing waste. Waste-to-Energy: Croatia is planning four waste-to-energy plants, adding to a wider regional push to divert rubbish from landfill.

Ocean Plastics: The Ocean Cleanup and UN ESCAP are developing a regional partnership to tackle plastic leakage in Asia-Pacific, linking waste infrastructure and policy with river and coastal cleanups. City Budgets: Cebu City’s proposed ₱15.74-billion 2027 investment plan is under scrutiny over whether it gives enough priority to waste management and flood control. E-waste: A survey found 44% of Irish consumers discarded low-cost electronics within a month; fewer than half took them to a recycling centre. Circular Economy: A Japanese facility shows how end-of-life cars can be dismantled for reusable materials, though dealers in Trinidad and Tobago question whether the model would pay off locally. Waste Services: The EU and civil society groups are urging Kenyan county governments to offer affordable licensing and bring informal waste operators into public services and policymaking.

Waste-Site Risks: A fire at David’s Tire Recycling in Missouri left shredded-tire piles burning under continuous monitoring. In Uttar Pradesh, a factory owner died after a mob attacked his tyre-melting plant over smoke complaints, highlighting the health concerns surrounding waste processing. Collection and Enforcement: Nairobi says it cleared more than 100,000 tonnes of garbage in a month to reduce flood risks. Mumbai will fine construction-waste trucks ₹25,000 for operating without tracking devices, while India’s National Green Tribunal has urged strict enforcement of construction-waste rules in Chennai. Recycling Safety: New Zealand’s Blenheim sorting centre has reopened after an 11-month closure and $2.5 million in fire damage; a discarded vape battery is suspected as the cause. Singapore is trialling e-waste drop-off points at lockers and Shopee collection sites. Waste Treatment and Investment: Ho Chi Minh City is advancing a shift to waste-to-energy, Suez has secured a major waste contract in Tyneside, and Qatar’s recycling sector is expanding with 61 new units.

Construction Waste: Mumbai will impose ₹25,000 fines on construction-waste vehicles without active tracking and on unregistered sites, as the city generates over 8,000 tonnes of debris daily but can treat only about 1,200 tonnes. Waste Treatment: Ho Chi Minh City is expanding waste-to-energy at its largest facility to ease pressure from more than 14,000 tonnes of daily household waste. Chennai officials also reviewed facilities that turn wet waste into biogas and wastewater into reusable water. Collection Services: Wrexham is consulting residents on service changes, including proposed free garden-waste collection from 2027 and adding batteries and cartons to kerbside recycling. Recycling Innovation: Singapore has launched a six-month trial for dropping off used phones and laptops at lockers and Shopee collection points; a vision-based robot is also being developed to identify valuable recyclables in real time. Industry Developments: Uzbekistan is advancing a $112 million waste-management project, while the UK has announced its first waste-and-recycling robotics hub.