In case you missed it: Thoughtful, newsworthy comments from industry professionals, consumers, and legislators.

"Recycling is the epitome of what the current administration is calling for in terms of bringing jobs home from overseas and leveraging private investment in public service infrastructure."

— Gary Liss, vice president of Zero Waste USA, in an interview with Waste Dive regarding solid waste infrastructure across the U.S. Liss connected the recent American Society of Civil Engineers 2017 Infrastructure Report Card with the Trump administration's infrastructure proposals, noting the future of recycling could be bright with help from the right government initiatives.

"We can only gauge the realism and ambition of recycling targets once we know what member states will be measuring."

— Guy Thiran, director general for European trade association Eurometaux, regarding Europe's need to find a standardized recycling calculation method, as reported by Resource. This week the European Parliament voted in favor of four legislative amendments to establish recycling targets, including the goal of diverting 70% of municipal waste by 2030.

"If you don't have any other incentive for the cities or for the counties to recycle, it simply happens that the economics of the business drives the recyclables to the landfill."

— FCC Environmental CEO Inigo Sanz in an interview with Waste Dive regarding the company's expansion and future plans. Sanz noted that he is in favor of landfill taxes — despite their unpopularity in the U.S. market — in order to boost recycling.

"It's not a landfill anymore, it's like a mountain ... Whatever kind of country you are, you cannot let people live in this situation."

— Fisseha Tekle, the chief researcher for Amnesty International in Ethiopia, in an interview with CNN regarding a devastating collapse at a waste dump in Addis Ababa that killed at least 113. While it is still unclear what caused the landfill collapse, some have pointed fingers at the construction of a $120 million waste-to-energy facility on the site.

"The biggest mistake — and this is not just an ELD rule issue, it's kind of an 'any rule' issue — our natural human tendency is to wait, it's coming, we'll see as we get closer down the road."

— Joe DeLorenzo, director of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) Office of Compliance and Enforcement, regarding regulations for electronic logging devices (ELDs), as reported by Fleet Owner. DeLorenzo warned that, with the ELD transition date slowly creeping up on the industry, fleet managers should move away from paper logs sooner than later.

"​We were closer to an answer 30 years ago: what on earth happened to milkmen and bottle deposits? Now we live in an absurd age where a packet of crisps can have seven layers of wrapping."

— Journalist and editor Dave Hall in a piece for the Guardian about the dangers of the world's "unsustainable convenience culture." Hall explains why packaging waste is an enormous and difficult issue to tackle, and suggests that humans around the globe need to rethink the way we consume products.