| During last week’s plenary session, MEPs approved Bart Staes’ report on shipments of waste in first reading. The European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services (FEAD) welcomes the revision of the Waste Shipments Regulation, which aims to strengthen and harmonise inspection standards throughout the EU.

| With effect from 30 April 2014, Joachim Wagner (47) is stepping down from the top management level of the Alba Group and its subsidiary, Alba SE for personal reasons.

| The federation argues that bio-degradable plastics will contaminate the recycling chain.

| In the 2013 fiscal year, Oryx Stainless has been able to maintain its global market position despite market-related low turnovers and tonnage. The low expectations of the previous financial year were undercut in the process. The group's customers report on the most difficult environment for stainless steel in years.

| Product certification organization TCO Development announced the first products to meet a new certification for computer displays containing a minimum of 85% post consumer recycled plastics.

| Italy becomes the first major PV market to implement the EU recast WEEE Directive (2012/19/EU), to ensure the correct treatment of waste of electrical and electronic equipment.

| Alba SE today announced its results for 2013. Both revenue and profits were below the previous year's results. The outlook for 2014 also is not very optimistic.

| According to the steel association, the Energy and Environmental State Aid offers only limited protection from increases in electricity prices.

| The trial centres allow customers to optimise their machine's configuration to produce recycled pellets.

| The Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA) released the 2012 Post Consumer Plastics Recycling in Canada Report stating that for the third year in a row, the amount of post-consumer plastic packaging being recycled across Canada has increased.

| According to a press release Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) has developed a world-first technology for recycling the copper contained in wiring harnesses, in collaboration with Yazaki Corporation, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, and eight other companies. The newly-developed technology is expected to produce copper with a purity of 99.96 percent.

| Invotec Group, a manufacturer of high technology PCBs, has announced its participation in the Sustainable Treatment Of Waste Using Recycled Chitosans (STOWURC) project which has been set up under the auspices of the Technology Strategy Board.

| PV Cycle has announced that it has received approval from the secretary of state of the UK to operate a DTS (Dstributor Take-back Scheme). The DTS is focussed on the collection of photovoltaic (PV) panels through a network of PV-dedicated collection facilities.

| The new plant, build by Sims Metal Management, is expexted to handle all of the cities recyclables.

| According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2012 Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash and recycled and composted 86,6 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.5 percent recycling rate.