Tagged “data”
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.
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.
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.