Earth911 welcomes David New, founder of Obaggo, a counter-top appliance that turns a variety of plastic films into recyclable pucks that do not jam recycling center equipment. Recycling in the United States is unnecessarily difficult. Plastic, in particular, is hard to sort because of the myriad forms its takes – it is often unlabeled, which means one cannot identify what kinds of plastic needs to be recycled – and finding drop-off locations that accept the material you have can be a matter of luck. If your city doesn’t accept, for instance, plastic film, you’ll few or no options. But that may be changing. Obaggo can compress plastic bags and film, including #2 and #4 plastic shopping bags, Amazon’s recyclable plastic bags, food wrapping and cereal bags that are in boxes of your favorite breakfast.

The Obaggo appliance is currently available through Indiegogo for $229 — please note that backing a company on Indiegogo does not always mean you will receive the product. Obaggo offers a potentially groundbreaking change in the recyclability of plastic film. You can learn about Obaggo at https://www.obaggo.com/.