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Circular & Sustainable
Curated news, analysis and data on sustainability and the circular economy — fact-checked, sourced, and global.
Fashion's Recycled Polyester Is 97% Bottles. Europe Has Promised Those Bottles to Someone Else.
Almost all the recycled polyester in clothing comes from PET drink bottles, not from old clothes. From 2030 the EU requires beverage bottles to contain 30% recycled plastic, rising to 65% by 2040. Both industries need the same flake.
Nvidia's New CPU Is for Servers. What It Threatens Is the Secondhand Laptop Market.
Modal adopting Nvidia's Vera processor is a data centre story with no laptop in it. For laptops it still matters twice: it weakens the case for buying an AI PC, and it advances an architecture shift with a history of stranding working machines.
Europe Set the First Battery Recycled-Content Targets. One of Them Needs 125% of the Nickel.
From August 2031 new EV and industrial batteries must contain minimum recycled cobalt, lithium and nickel. Modelled against Europe's own end-of-life volumes, the nickel target would require collecting more than exists.
A Circuit Board Holds Sixty Elements. Europe's Best Smelter Recovers Seventeen.
A motherboard is richer than gold ore, and recycling it is judged by weight. Iron is over 70% of an electronic's mass and under 15% of its thermodynamic value, so a recycler can hit the target while losing almost everything that made the board matter.
America's Secondhand Phone Market Is Booming. Nobody Can Tell You How Big It Is.
Estimates of the US used and refurbished phone market disagree by factors, come almost entirely from commercial research firms, and in one case contradict themselves. The best-evidenced number describes the failure, not the success.
Europe Banned Destroying Unsold Clothes in July. The Test We Proposed Can't Be Run.
The ESPR destruction ban took effect for large companies on 19 July 2026. We said to watch whether deadstock volumes arriving in Accra fall. Three months on, there is no measurement capable of answering that.
America Recycles 38% of Its Electronics. The Last Time Anyone Measured Was 2018.
The EPA put the US consumer electronics recycling rate at 38.5%. That figure is from 2018 and no newer national number has been published, because no federal law requires anyone to produce one.
Construction Waste Hits Its Recycling Target. Most of It Becomes Road Base.
Construction is 38% of all EU waste, and member states report an average recovery rate of 89% against a 70% target. The target counts backfilling. Strip it out and Malta falls from 100% to 24%.
GuideBest Places to Sell a Used Laptop: A Complete Guide for US Residents
Every realistic option for selling a used laptop in the US, what each one actually pays, and how to decide between the highest price and the least hassle.
Europe Made Textile Collection Mandatory. The Collectors Are Going Bust.
Separate collection of textiles became compulsory across the EU in January 2025. Fibre-to-fibre recycling is still below 1%, major collectors have filed for insolvency, and the EEA expects the main effect to be more exports.
India's E-Waste Rules Are Tightening. The Trade Is Moving, Not Shrinking.
India generates nearly 1.4 million tonnes of e-waste a year, and most of it moves through an informal network that beats formal recyclers on collection. New rules and a contested price floor are squeezing that network.
Aluminium Nearly Closes the Loop. Sorting Is What Stops It.
Recycling aluminium uses about 95% less energy than smelting it, and roughly three-quarters of all aluminium ever made is still in use. The obstacle is not collection. It is that aluminium is not one material.
Right to Repair Is Law Now. That Was the Easy Part.
The EU directive deadline passed in July. Several US states have statutes. But New York's was weakened before signing, enforcement has barely started, and the one long-running dataset shows self-declared repair scores running high.
The Digital Product Passport Is Coming. Almost None of It Is Law Yet.
Two years after the EU's ecodesign regulation entered into force, no product-specific passport rule has been adopted. Batteries is the only category with a fixed date, and the hardest question is still unanswered.
Chemical Recycling's Missing Number
The industry says it turns waste plastic back into plastic. The best independent estimate is 15-20%, the operators decline to publish their own figures, and the EU has now written accounting rules around the gap.
The World Recycles More Than Ever. Global Circularity Is Still Falling.
Only 6.9% of the materials entering the global economy come from recycled sources, down from 9.1% in 2018. Recycling did not get worse. Consumption outgrew it.