Pittsburg, CA: September 22, 2025 - Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery (MDRR) is excited to announce a significant step forward in recycling innovation through a new strategic partnership with Colgate and Glacier.

Lexi Maerz, a materials engineer with Amazon’s sustainability lab in Seattle, using a device that turns pellets of plant-based plastic into films. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)In its pursuit of planet-friendly plastics, Amazon is putting candidate materials through a series of devices that recall medieval torture methods. Plastic films are slowly stretched to the point of breaking. They’re sliced with a blade on tiny pendulum, poked until they puncture. At the Amazon sustainability lab — an uncluttered, windowless space in the industrial zone south of Seattle’s sports stadiums — researchers are testing new plant-based “biopolyesters” that could one day be used in carrot bags, potato chip packages and clamshell containers for fresh berries.While a significant challenge, Amazon’s ambitions in this sphere extend well beyond the development of green plastics. The tech and retail giant is reimagining the entire food packaging system from materials, to waste collection, to recycling and reuse of the environmental plastics.The goal is an easy-to-use, cost-competitive, scalable solution that will speed the transition away from fossil fuel-based plastics that harm the climate and add to the glut of plastic pollution around the globe