A data-erasure company says far too many used drives are not properly wiped, and a law firm pursues a class-action lawsuit against beleaguered processor Total Reclaim. Data destruction failures: Blancco Technology Group purchased 200 used hard disk drives and solid state drives from eBay and Craigslist during the first quarter of this year. What they found: two-thirds of them still...

NASA plans to experiment with interstellar plastics recycling, and a town in British Columbia says a fee on bags is successfully deterring residents from using the products. Recycling plastic in space: NASA has reportedly shelled out $750,000 for a 3-D printer capable of recycling plastic products. Geekwire reports the U.S. space agency is expected to receive the device, which is...

The Closed Loop Fund has provided financial backing to Memphis, Tenn. to help the municipality transition to single-stream recycling. The industry-backed fund announced the partnership in a press release today. The Closed Loop Fund will be providing $3.25 million to Memphis, which has a population of just over 650,000, making it the largest city in Tennessee and the 23rd largest...

The statewide recycling and composting rate for California fell to 47 percent last year after hovering near 50 percent during the previous three years. That's according to data from the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). Lawmakers in The Golden State, population 39 million, have set a 2020 goal of recycling and composting 75 percent of material. "At...

The U.S. recovery rate for old corrugated containers hit 92.9 percent in 2015, according to the Corrugated Packaging Alliance. That number is up 3.7 percentage points from the year before and is the highest rate ever recorded for the material, a fact driven both by an increase in domestic consumption and by OCC exports. A total of 31.3 million tons...

Brand owners will have to cut bigger checks over the next year to support curbside recycling in Canada's most populous province. The board of Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) said industry stewards must pay 121.5 million Canadian dollars ($92.9 million USD) over the next year to support the Blue Box program, the curbside recycling program for printed paper and packaging. That...

Paper giant Cascades closes a Maine mill consuming recovered fiber, and Winnipeg notches a high recycling rate but receives more missed pick-up complaints. Diversion rate: The diversion rate in Winnipeg, Manitoba climbed to 31.4 percent last year, largely because of an increase in collection of yard debris, CTV News reports. But not everybody is happy: The number of calls made...

A legislative fix to revamp Pennsylvania's struggling electronics recycling program isn't going to cut it, according to a group of five recycling stakeholders in the state.

A company employing a unique recycling approach for hard disk drive magnets has raised $25 million to build a facility in Austin, Texas. The Austin-based Urban Mining Co. announced the completion of Series A financing to build a rare earth magnet recycling and manufacturing facility in the city.The company uses a patented magnet-to-magnet method to recycle the neodymium magnets (often...

Computer giant Dell says it is closing in on its goal of collecting 2 billion pounds of used electronics by 2020. According to the sustainability report, Dell-backed programs worldwide recovered 168 million pounds of material in the company's 2016 fiscal year.That brings the company's total to 1.6 billion pounds since 2008, when it began charting progress toward the 2020 goal.The...