title: Recycling

text: In 2003, San Francisco's Department of the Environment set a citywide goal of zero waste by 2020. San Francisco's refuse hauler, Recology, operates an effective recyclables sorting facility that has helped the city reach a record-breaking landfill diversion rate of 80% as of 2021. Other American cities, including Los Angeles, have achieved similar rates.


title: Recycling

text: Although many government programs concentrate on recycling at home, 64% of waste in the United Kingdom is generated by industry. The focus of many recycling programs in industry is their cost-effectiveness. The ubiquitous nature of cardboard packaging makes cardboard a commonly waste product recycled by companies that deal heavily in packaged goods, such as retail stores, warehouses, and goods distributors. Other industries deal in niche and specialized products, depending on the waste materials they handle.


title: Recycling

text: Glass, lumber, wood pulp and paper manufacturers all deal directly in commonly recycled materials; however, independent tire dealers may collect and recycle rubber tires for a profit.


title: Recycling

text: The waste produced from burning coal in a Coal-fired power station is often called fuel ash or fly ash in the United States. It is a very useful material and used in concrete construction. It exhibits Pozzolanic activity.


title: Recycling

text: Levels of metals recycling are generally low. In 2010, the International Resource Panel, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), published reports on metal stocks and their recycling rates. It reported that the increase in the use of metals during the 20th and into the 21st century has led to a substantial shift in metal stocks from below-ground to use in above-ground applications within society. For example, in the US, in-use copper grew from 73 to 238 kg per capita between 1932–1999.


title: Recycling

text: The report's authors observed that, as metals are inherently recyclable, metal stocks in society can serve as huge above-ground mines (the term "urban mining" has thus been coined). However, they found that the recycling rates of many metals are low. They warned that the recycling rates of some rare metals used in applications such as mobile phones, battery packs for hybrid cars and fuel cells, are so low that unless future end-of-life recycling rates are dramatically increased, these critical metals will become unavailable for use in modern technology.


title: Recycling

text: The military recycles some metals. The U.S. Navy's Ship Disposal Program uses ship breaking to reclaim the steel of old vessels. Ships may also be sunk to create artificial reefs. Uranium is a dense metal that has qualities superior to lead and titanium for many military and industrial uses. Uranium left over from processing it into nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear reactors is called depleted uranium, and is used by all branches of the U.S. military for the development of such things as armor-piercing shells and shielding.


title: Recycling

text: The construction industry may recycle concrete and old road surface pavement, selling these materials for profit.


title: Recycling

text: Some rapidly growing industries, particularly the renewable energy and solar photovoltaic technology industries, are proactively creating recycling policies even before their waste streams have considerable volume, anticipating future demand.


title: Recycling

text: Recycling of plastics is more difficult, as most programs are not able to reach the necessary level of quality. Recycling of PVC often results in downcycling of the material, which means only products of lower quality standard can be made with the recycled material.


title: Recycling

text: E-waste is a growing problem, accounting for 20–50 million metric tons of global waste per year according to the EPA. It is also the fastest growing waste stream in the EU. Many recyclers do not recycle e-waste responsibly. After the cargo barge Khian Sea dumped 14,000 metric tons of toxic ash in Haiti, the Basel Convention was formed to stem the flow of hazardous substances into poorer countries. They created the e-Stewards certification to ensure that recyclers are held to the highest standards for environmental responsibility and to help consumers identify responsible recyclers. It operates alongside other prominent legislation, such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive of the EU and the United States National Computer Recycling Act, to prevent poisonous chemicals from entering waterways and the atmosphere.


title: Recycling

text: In the recycling process, television sets, monitors, cell phones, and computers are typically tested for reuse and repaired. If broken, they may be disassembled for parts still having high value if labor is cheap enough. Other e-waste is shredded to pieces roughly in size and manually checked to separate toxic batteries and capacitors, which contain poisonous metals. The remaining pieces are further shredded to particles and passed under a magnet to remove ferrous metals. An eddy current ejects non-ferrous metals, which are sorted by density either by a centrifuge or vibrating plates. Precious metals can be dissolved in acid, sorted, and smelted into ingots. The remaining glass and plastic fractions are separated by density and sold to re-processors. Television sets and monitors must be manually disassembled to remove lead from CRTs and the mercury backlight from LCDs.


title: Recycling

text: Vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines can also be recycled. They often contain rare-earth elements (REE) and/or other critical raw materials. For electric car production, large amounts of REE's are typically required.


title: Recycling

text: Whereas many critical raw elements and REE's can be recovered, environmental engineer Phillipe Bihouix reports that recycling of indium, gallium, germanium, selenium, and tantalum is still very difficult and their recycling rates are very low.


title: Recycling

text: Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down soft drink bottles and then casting them as plastic chairs and tables. For some types of plastic, the same piece of plastic can only be recycled about 2–3 times before its quality decreases to the point where it can no longer be used.


title: Recycling

text: Some plastics are remelted to form new plastic objects; for example, PET water bottles can be converted into polyester destined for clothing. A disadvantage of this type of recycling is that the molecular weight of the polymer can change further and the levels of unwanted substances in the plastic can increase with each remelt.


title: Recycling

text: A commercial-built recycling facility was sent to the International Space Station in late 2019. The facility takes in plastic waste and unneeded plastic parts and physically converts them into spools of feedstock for the space station additive manufacturing facility used for in-space 3D printing.


title: Recycling

text: For some polymers, it is possible to convert them back into monomers, for example, PET can be treated with an alcohol and a catalyst to form a dialkyl terephthalate. The terephthalate diester can be used with ethylene glycol to form a new polyester polymer, thus making it possible to use the pure polymer again. In 2019, Eastman Chemical Company announced initiatives of methanolysis and syngas designed to handle a greater variety of used material.


title: Recycling

text: Another process involves the conversion of assorted polymers into petroleum by a much less precise thermal depolymerization process. Such a process would be able to accept almost any polymer or mix of polymers, including thermoset materials such as vulcanized rubber tires and the biopolymers in feathers and other agricultural waste. Like natural petroleum, the chemicals produced can be used as fuels or as feedstock. A RESEM Technology plant of this type in Carthage, Missouri, US, uses turkey waste as input material. Gasification is a similar process but is not technically recycling since polymers are not likely to become the result.


title: Recycling

text: Plastic Pyrolysis can convert petroleum based waste streams such as plastics into quality fuels, carbons. Given below is the list of suitable plastic raw materials for pyrolysis:


title: Recycling

text: The (ideal) recycling process can be differentiated into three loops, one for manufacture (production-waste recycling) and two for disposal of the product (product and material recycling).


title: Recycling

text: The product's manufacturing phase, which consists of material processing and fabrication, forms the "production-waste recycling" loop. Industrial waste materials are fed back into, and reused in, the same production process.


title: Recycling

text: The product's disposal process requires two recycling loops: "product recycling" and "material recycling".


title: Recycling

text: The product or product parts are reused in the "product recycling" phase. This happens in one of two ways: the product is used retaining the product functionality ("reuse") or the product continues to be used but with altered functionality ("further use"). The product design is unmodified, or only slightly modified, in both scenarios.


title: Recycling

text: Product disassembly requires "material recycling" where product materials are recovered and recycled. Ideally, the materials are processed so they can flow back into the production process.


title: Recycling

text: In order to meet recyclers' needs while providing manufacturers a consistent, uniform system, a coding system was developed. The recycling code for plastics was introduced in 1988 by the plastics industry through the Society of the Plastics Industry. Because municipal recycling programs traditionally have targeted packaging—primarily bottles and containers—the resin coding system offered a means of identifying the resin content of bottles and containers commonly found in the residential waste stream.


title: Recycling

text: Plastic products are printed with numbers 1–7 depending on the type of resin. Type 1 (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly found in soft drink and water bottles. Type 2 (high-density polyethylene) is found in most hard plastics such as milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, and some dishware. Type 3 (polyvinyl chloride) includes items such as shampoo bottles, shower curtains, hula hoops, credit cards, wire jacketing, medical equipment, siding, and piping. Type 4 (low-density polyethylene) is found in shopping bags, squeezable bottles, tote bags, clothing, furniture, and carpet. Type 5 is polypropylene and makes up syrup bottles, straws, Tupperware, and some automotive parts. Type 6 is polystyrene and makes up meat trays, egg cartons, clamshell containers, and compact disc cases. Type 7 includes all other plastics such as bulletproof materials, 3- and 5-gallon water bottles, cell phone and tablet frames, safety goggles and sunglasses. Having a recycling code or the chasing arrows logo on a material is not an automatic indicator that a material is recyclable but rather an explanation of what the material is. Types 1 and 2 are the most commonly recycled.


title: Recycling

text: In addition to environmental impact, there is debate over whether recycling is economically efficient. According to a Natural Resources Defense Council study, waste collection and landfill disposal creates less than one job per 1,000 tons of waste material managed; in contrast, the collection, processing, and manufacturing of recycled materials creates 6–13 or more jobs per 1,000 tons. According to the U.S. Recycling Economic Informational Study, there are over 50,000 recycling establishments that have created over a million jobs in the US. The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) reported in May 2015 that recycling and waste made a $6.7 billion economic impact in Ohio, U.S., and employed 14,000 people. Economists would classify this extra labor used as a cost rather than a benefit since these workers could have been employed elsewhere; the cost effectiveness of creating these additional jobs remains unclear.


title: Recycling

text: Sometimes cities have found recycling saves resources compared to other methods of dispoal of waste. Two years after New York City declared that implementing recycling programs would be "a drain on the city", New York City leaders realized that an efficient recycling system could save the city over $20 million. Municipalities often see fiscal benefits from implementing recycling programs, largely due to the reduced landfill costs. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark according to the Economist found that in 83 percent of cases, recycling is the most efficient method to dispose of household waste. However, a 2004 assessment by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute concluded that incineration was the most effective method for disposing of drink containers, even aluminium ones.


title: Recycling

text: Fiscal efficiency is separate from economic efficiency. Economic analysis of recycling does not include what economists call externalities: unpriced costs and benefits that accrue to individuals outside of private transactions. Examples include less air pollution and greenhouse gases from incineration and less waste leaching from landfills. Without mechanisms such as taxes or subsidies, businesses and consumers following their private benefit would ignore externalities despite the costs imposed on society. If landfills and incinerator pollution is inadequately regulated, these methods of waste disposal appear cheaper than they really are, because part of their cost is the pollution imposed on people nearby. Thus, advocates have pushed for legislation to increase demand for recycled materials. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded in favor of recycling, saying that recycling efforts reduced the country's carbon emissions by a net 49 million metric tonnes in 2005. In the United Kingdom, the Waste and Resources Action Programme stated that Great Britain's recycling efforts reduce CO emissions by 10–15 million tonnes a year. The question for economic efficiency is whether this reduction is worth the extra cost of recycling and thus makes the artificial demand creates by legislation worthwhile.


title: Recycling

text: Certain requirements must be met for recycling to be economically feasible and environmentally effective. These include an adequate source of recyclates, a system to extract those recyclates from the waste stream, a nearby factory capable of reprocessing the recyclates, and a potential demand for the recycled products. These last two requirements are often overlooked—without both an industrial market for production using the collected materials and a consumer market for the manufactured goods, recycling is incomplete and in fact only "collection".


title: Recycling

text: Free-market economist Julian Simon remarked "There are three ways society can organize waste disposal: (a) commanding, (b) guiding by tax and subsidy, and (c) leaving it to the individual and the market". These principles appear to divide economic thinkers today.


title: Recycling

text: Frank Ackerman favours a high level of government intervention to provide recycling services. He believes that recycling's benefit cannot be effectively quantified by traditional "laissez-faire" economics. Allen Hershkowitz supports intervention, saying that it is a public service equal to education and policing. He argues that manufacturers should shoulder more of the burden of waste disposal.


title: Recycling

text: Paul Calcott and Margaret Walls advocate the second option. A deposit refund scheme and a small refuse charge would encourage recycling but not at the expense of illegal dumping. Thomas C. Kinnaman concludes that a landfill tax would force consumers, companies and councils to recycle more.


title: Recycling

text: Most free-market thinkers detest subsidy and intervention, arguing that they waste resources. The general argument is that if cities charge the full cost of garbage collection, private companies can profitably recycle any materials for which the benefit of recycling exceeds the cost (e.g. aluminum) and do not recycle other materials for which the benefit is less than the cost (e.g. glass). Cities, on the other hand, often recycle even when they not only do not receive enough for the paper or plastic to pay for its collection, but must actually pay private recycling companies to take it off of their hands. Terry Anderson and Donald Leal think that all recycling programmes should be privately operated, and therefore would only operate if the money saved by recycling exceeds its costs. Daniel K. Benjamin argues that it wastes people's resources and lowers the wealth of a population. He notes that recycling can cost a city more than twice as much as landfills, that in the United States landfills are so heavily regulated that their pollution effects are negligible, and that the recycling process also generates pollution and uses energy, which may or may not be less than from virgin production.


title: Recycling

text: Certain countries trade in unprocessed recyclates. Some have complained that the ultimate fate of recyclates sold to another country is unknown and they may end up in landfills instead of being reprocessed. According to one report, in America, 50–80 percent of computers destined for recycling are actually not recycled. There are reports of illegal-waste imports to China being dismantled and recycled solely for monetary gain, without consideration for workers' health or environmental damage. Although the Chinese government has banned these practices, it has not been able to eradicate them. In 2008, the prices of recyclable waste plummeted before rebounding in 2009. Cardboard averaged about £53/tonne from 2004 to 2008, dropped to £19/tonne, and then went up to £59/tonne in May 2009. PET plastic averaged about £156/tonne, dropped to £75/tonne and then moved up to £195/tonne in May 2009.


title: Recycling

text: Certain regions have difficulty using or exporting as much of a material as they recycle. This problem is most prevalent with glass: both Britain and the U.S. import large quantities of wine bottled in green glass. Though much of this glass is sent to be recycled, outside the American Midwest there is not enough wine production to use all of the reprocessed material. The extra must be downcycled into building materials or re-inserted into the regular waste stream.


title: Recycling

text: Similarly, the northwestern United States has difficulty finding markets for recycled newspaper, given the large number of pulp mills in the region as well as the proximity to Asian markets. In other areas of the U.S., however, demand for used newsprint has seen wide fluctuation.


title: Recycling

text: In some U.S. states, a program called RecycleBank pays people to recycle, receiving money from local municipalities for the reduction in landfill space that must be purchased. It uses a single stream process in which all material is automatically sorted.


title: Recycling

text: Critics dispute the net economic and environmental benefits of recycling over its costs, and suggest that proponents of recycling often make matters worse and suffer from confirmation bias. Specifically, critics argue that the costs and energy used in collection and transportation detract from (and outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the production process; also that the jobs produced by the recycling industry can be a poor trade for the jobs lost in logging, mining, and other industries associated with production; and that materials such as paper pulp can only be recycled a few times before material degradation prevents further recycling.


title: Recycling

text: Much of the difficulty inherent in recycling comes from the fact that most products are not designed with recycling in mind. The concept of sustainable design aims to solve this problem, and was laid out in the book "" by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart. They suggest that every product (and all packaging it requires) should have a complete "closed-loop" cycle mapped out for each component—a way in which every component either returns to the natural ecosystem through biodegradation or is recycled indefinitely.


title: Recycling

text: While recycling diverts waste from entering directly into landfill sites, current recycling misses the dispersive components. These critics believe that complete recycling is impracticable as highly dispersed wastes become so diluted that the energy needed for their recovery becomes increasingly excessive.


title: Recycling

text: As with environmental economics, care must be taken to ensure a complete view of the costs and benefits involved. For example, paperboard packaging for food products is more easily recycled than most plastic, but is heavier to ship and may result in more waste from spoilage.


title: Recycling

text: The amount of energy saved through recycling depends upon the material being recycled and the type of energy accounting that is used. Correct accounting for this saved energy can be accomplished with life-cycle analysis using real energy values, and in addition, exergy, which is a measure of how much useful energy can be used. In general, it takes far less energy to produce a unit mass of recycled materials than it does to make the same mass of virgin materials.


title: Recycling

text: Some scholars use emergy (spelled with an m) analysis, for example, budgets for the amount of energy of one kind (exergy) that is required to make or transform things into another kind of product or service. Emergy calculations take into account economics that can alter pure physics-based results. Using emergy life-cycle analysis researchers have concluded that materials with large refining costs have the greatest potential for high recycle benefits. Moreover, the highest emergy efficiency accrues from systems geared toward material recycling, where materials are engineered to recycle back into their original form and purpose, followed by adaptive reuse systems where the materials are recycled into a different kind of product, and then by-product reuse systems where parts of the products are used to make an entirely different product.


title: Recycling

text: The Energy Information Administration (EIA) states on its website that "a paper mill uses 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber." Some critics argue that it takes more energy to produce recycled products than it does to dispose of them in traditional landfill methods, since the curbside collection of recyclables often requires a second waste truck. However, recycling proponents point out that a second timber or logging truck is eliminated when paper is collected for recycling, so the net energy consumption is the same. An emergy life-cycle analysis on recycling revealed that fly ash, aluminum, recycled concrete aggregate, recycled plastic, and steel yield higher efficiency ratios, whereas the recycling of lumber generates the lowest recycle benefit ratio. Hence, the specific nature of the recycling process, the methods used to analyse the process, and the products involved affect the energy savings budgets.


title: Recycling

text: It is difficult to determine the amount of energy consumed or produced in waste disposal processes in broader ecological terms, where causal relations dissipate into complex networks of material and energy flow. For example, "cities do not follow all the strategies of ecosystem development. Biogeochemical paths become fairly straight relative to wild ecosystems, with reduced recycling, resulting in large flows of waste and low total energy efficiencies. By contrast, in wild ecosystems, one population's wastes are another population's resources, and succession results in efficient exploitation of available resources. However, even modernized cities may still be in the earliest stages of a succession that may take centuries or millennia to complete." How much energy is used in recycling also depends on the type of material being recycled and the process used to do so. Aluminium is generally agreed to use far less energy when recycled rather than being produced from scratch. The EPA states that "recycling aluminum cans, for example, saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source, bauxite." In 2009, more than half of all aluminium cans produced came from recycled aluminium. Similarly, it has been estimated that new steel produced with recycled cans reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 75%.


title: Recycling

text: Economist Steven Landsburg has suggested that the sole benefit of reducing landfill space is trumped by the energy needed and resulting pollution from the recycling process. Others, however, have calculated through life-cycle assessment that producing recycled paper uses less energy and water than harvesting, pulping, processing, and transporting virgin trees. When less recycled paper is used, additional energy is needed to create and maintain farmed forests until these forests are as self-sustainable as virgin forests.


title: Recycling

text: Other studies have shown that recycling in itself is inefficient to perform the "decoupling" of economic development from the depletion of non-renewable raw materials that is necessary for sustainable development. The international transportation or recycle material flows through "... different trade networks of the three countries result in different flows, decay rates, and potential recycling returns". As global consumption of a natural resources grows, their depletion is inevitable. The best recycling can do is to delay; complete closure of material loops to achieve 100 percent recycling of nonrenewables is impossible as micro-trace materials dissipate into the environment causing severe damage to the planet's ecosystems. Historically, this was identified as the metabolic rift by Karl Marx, who identified the unequal exchange rate between energy and nutrients flowing from rural areas to feed urban cities that create effluent wastes degrading the planet's ecological capital, such as loss in soil nutrient production. Energy conservation also leads to what is known as Jevon's paradox, where improvements in energy efficiency lowers the cost of production and leads to a rebound effect where rates of consumption and economic growth increases.


title: Recycling

text: The amount of money actually saved through recycling depends on the efficiency of the recycling program used to do it. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance argues that the cost of recycling depends on various factors, such as landfill fees and the amount of disposal that the community recycles. It states that communities begin to save money when they treat recycling as a replacement for their traditional waste system rather than an add-on to it and by "redesigning their collection schedules and/or trucks".


title: Recycling

text: In some cases, the cost of recyclable materials also exceeds the cost of raw materials. Virgin plastic resin costs 40 percent less than recycled resin. Additionally, a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study that tracked the price of clear glass from 15 July to 2 August 1991, found that the average cost per ton ranged from $40 to $60 while a USGS report shows that the cost per ton of raw silica sand from years 1993 to 1997 fell between $17.33 and $18.10.


title: Recycling

text: Comparing the market cost of recyclable material with the cost of new raw materials ignores economic externalities—the costs that are currently not counted by the market. Creating a new piece of plastic, for instance, may cause more pollution and be less sustainable than recycling a similar piece of plastic, but these factors are not counted in market cost. A life cycle assessment can be used to determine the levels of externalities and decide whether the recycling may be worthwhile despite unfavorable market costs. Alternatively, legal means (such as a carbon tax) can be used to bring externalities into the market, so that the market cost of the material becomes close to the true cost.


title: Recycling

text: The recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment can create a significant amount of pollution. This problem is specifically occurrent in India and China. Informal recycling in an underground economy of these countries has generated an environmental and health disaster. High levels of lead (Pb), polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated dioxins and furans, as well as polybrominated dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs and PBDD/Fs), concentrated in the air, bottom ash, dust, soil, water, and sediments in areas surrounding recycling sites. These materials can make work sites harmful to the workers themselves and the surrounding environment.


title: Recycling

text: Economist Steven Landsburg, author of a paper entitled "Why I Am Not an Environmentalist", claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish their forests, large demands for paper lead to large forests while reduced demand for paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests.


title: Recycling

text: When foresting companies cut down trees, more are planted in their place; however, such farmed forests are inferior to natural forests in several ways. Farmed forests are not able to fix the soil as quickly as natural forests. This can cause widespread soil erosion and often requiring large amounts of fertilizer to maintain the soil, while containing little tree and wild-life biodiversity compared to virgin forests. Also, the new trees planted are not as big as the trees that were cut down, and the argument that there would be "more trees" is not compelling to forestry advocates when they are counting saplings.


title: Recycling

text: In particular, wood from tropical rainforests is rarely harvested for paper because of their heterogeneity. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, the overwhelming direct cause of deforestation is subsistence farming (48% of deforestation) and commercial agriculture (32%), which is linked to food, not paper production.


title: Recycling

text: Other non-conventional methods of material recycling, like Waste-to-Energy (WTE) systems, have garnered increased attention in the recent past due to the polarizing nature of their emissions. While viewed as a sustainable method of capturing energy from material waste feedstocks by many, others have cited numerous explanations for why the technology has not been scaled globally.


title: Recycling

text: In some countries, recycling is performed by the entrepreneurial poor such as the karung guni, zabbaleen, the rag-and-bone man, waste picker, and junk man. With the creation of large recycling organizations that may be profitable, either by law or economies of scale, the poor are more likely to be driven out of the recycling and the remanufacturing job market. To compensate for this loss of income, a society may need to create additional forms of societal programs to help support the poor. Like the parable of the broken window, there is a net loss to the poor and possibly the whole of a society to make recycling artificially profitable, e.g. through the law. However, in Brazil and Argentina, waste pickers/informal recyclers work alongside the authorities, in fully or semi-funded cooperatives, allowing informal recycling to be legitimized as a paid public sector job.


title: Recycling

text: Because the social support of a country is likely to be less than the loss of income to the poor undertaking recycling, there is a greater chance for the poor to come in conflict with the large recycling organizations. This means fewer people can decide if certain waste is more economically reusable in its current form rather than being reprocessed. Contrasted to the recycling poor, the efficiency of their recycling may actually be higher for some materials because individuals have greater control over what is considered "waste".


title: Recycling

text: One labor-intensive underused waste is electronic and computer waste. Because this waste may still be functional and wanted mostly by those on lower incomes, who may sell or use it at a greater efficiency than large recyclers.


title: Recycling

text: Some recycling advocates believe that laissez-faire individual-based recycling does not cover all of society's recycling needs. Thus, it does not negate the need for an organized recycling program. Local government can consider the activities of the recycling poor as contributing to the ruining of property.


title: Recycling

text: In a study done by social psychologist Shawn Burn, it was found that personal contact with individuals within a neighborhood is the most effective way to increase recycling within a community. In her study, she had 10 block leaders talk to their neighbors and persuade them to recycle. A comparison group was sent fliers promoting recycling. It was found that the neighbors that were personally contacted by their block leaders recycled much more than the group without personal contact. As a result of this study, Shawn Burn believes that personal contact within a small group of people is an important factor in encouraging recycling. Another study done by Stuart Oskamp examines the effect of neighbors and friends on recycling. It was found in his studies that people who had friends and neighbors that recycled were much more likely to also recycle than those who didn't have friends and neighbors that recycled.


title: Recycling

text: Many schools have created recycling awareness clubs in order to give young students an insight on recycling. These schools believe that the clubs actually encourage students to not only recycle at school but at home as well.


title: Recycling

text: Recycling of metals varies extremely by type. Titanium and lead have an extremely high recycling rates of over 90%. Copper and cobalt have high rates of recycling around 75%. Only about half of aluminum is recycled. Most of the remaining metals have recycling rates of below 35%, while 34 types of metals have recycling rates of under 1%.


title: Recycling

text: "Between 1960 and 2000, the world production of plastic resins increased 25 times its original amount, while recovery of the material remained below 5 percent." Many studies have addressed recycling behaviour and strategies to encourage community involvement in recycling programs. It has been argued that recycling behavior is not natural because it requires a focus and appreciation for long-term planning, whereas humans have evolved to be sensitive to short-term survival goals; and that to overcome this innate predisposition, the best solution would be to use social pressure to compel participation in recycling programs. However, recent studies have concluded that social pressure does not work in this context. One reason for this is that social pressure functions well in small group sizes of 50 to 150 individuals (common to nomadic hunter–gatherer peoples) but not in communities numbering in the millions, as we see today. Another reason is that individual recycling does not take place in the public view.


title: Recycling

text: Following the increasing popularity of recycling collection being sent to the same landfills as trash, some people kept on putting recyclables on the recyclables bin.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: Legendary Pictures Productions, LLC (doing business as Legendary Entertainment or simply Legendary) is an American film production and mass media company based in Burbank, California, founded by Thomas Tull in 2000. The company has collaborated with the likes of Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures and Netflix. Since 2016, Legendary has been a subsidiary of the multinational Wanda Group and Apollo.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: Thomas Tull founded Legendary Entertainment after raising $500 million from private equity firms. It was one of the first companies of its kind to pair major motion picture production with major Wall Street private equity and hedge fund investors, including ABRY Partners, AIG Direct Investments, Bank of America Capital Investors, Columbia Capital, Falcon Investment Advisors, and M/C Venture Partners. Legendary Pictures, Inc. was incorporated in California in 2000 and in 2005 it signed an agreement with Warner Bros. to co-produce and co-finance up to 40 films over seven years. In 2010, Tull, Fidelity Investments, and Fortress Investment Group bought all the shares of the original investors. The buyout also included a $25 million investment by Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment. Following the transaction, Tull became the largest shareholder, thus enabling him to more easily direct the company's operations. Golden Harvest later sold its stake in the company for $30 million. In 2011, Accel Partners bought $40 million-worth of shares and Accel partner Jim Breyer joined the company's board of directors. That same year the company was reported to have been valued at more than $1 billion. In September 2011, Chief Creative Officer Jon Jashni was appointed to the new position of President. In December 2012, Waddell & Reed bought around 20% of Legendary's shares for $443 million.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In July 2013, Legendary reached an agreement with Universal Pictures in which it would market, co-finance, and distribute Legendary's films for five years starting in 2014, the year that Legendary's similar agreement with Warner Bros. expired. In October 2014, SoftBank bought $250 million shares in Legendary for a 10% stake. The transaction increased the company's total value to around $3 billion.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2014, Legendary acquired the television producer Asylum Entertainment, which made ESPN's "30 for 30" and miniseries "The Kennedys", for $100 million, but Asylum Entertainment will continue operating as a separate company.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On January 11, 2016, Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group announced that it had concluded an agreement with shareholders to acquire Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, making it the largest acquisition of an American media company by a Chinese firm.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On January 17, 2017, it was announced that Tull had exited as Legendary Entertainment CEO. He was replaced by the senior vice president of Wanda's cultural industry group, Jack Gao, as interim CEO.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On October 17, 2017, it was reported that Gao stepped down from his positions at Legendary Entertainment and Wanda Group. The resignation comes after an announcement by Wanda's chairman Wang Jianlin earlier that year that Wanda would refocus its investments onto the Chinese domestic market in an attempt to "actively respond to the call of the country". This, in turn, is thought to be a consequence of the Chinese government banning Chinese banks from providing loans to Wanda Group's foreign operations, which was intended to stop the firm's offshore acquisition plans.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On December 5, 2017, it was announced that Joshua Grode had been named as Legendary Entertainment CEO.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On August 13, 2018, following the box office failure for many films, such as "Skyscraper" and "Crimson Peak", the distribution deal between Legendary Pictures and Universal Studios ended in 2019 and a new agreement was reached to return to Warner Bros. Pictures.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In December 2020, "Variety" and "Deadline Hollywood" reported that Legendary Entertainment, financiers, and talent with backend deals were not pleased with WarnerMedia's multi-release plans and non-transparent intentions. Legendary was not given advanced notice of the multi-release decision nor given a say in how "Dune" and "Godzilla vs. Kong" would be distributed. The studio planned to have discussions with Warner Bros. regarding a more "generous deal" however legal action was considered. A few weeks later, Deadline reported that the film could keep its HBO Max release but only if Warner Bros. matches Netflix's $250 million bid. In January 2021, "The Hollywood Reporter" revealed that a legal battle was averted due to Legendary and WarnerMedia nearing an agreement to keep the film's simultaneous release.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: On April 30, 2021, the company hired LionTree Advisors to explore possible deals, including the possibility of merging with a SPAC, making acquisitions, or finding partners. On July 22, 2021, it was announced that Legendary is looking for a merger instead of a SPAC. On January 31, 2022, a minority stake in Legendary was sold to Apollo Global Management, with Wanda still remaining the majority owner.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In August 2022, following the lapse of their deal with Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment began seeking a new partnership, with Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures among the companies interested.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In November 2022, Legendary Entertainment reached an agreement with Sony Pictures in which it would market, co-finance, and distribute Legendary's films with the exception of China where Legendary East will handle all marketing and distribution on its movies. Sony would also handle home entertainment and TV distribution for the Legendary titles it distributes. However, the partnership pact does not include the "Dune" and "MonsterVerse" franchises or films released for streaming as Legendary would continue to remain in business for Warner Bros. Pictures & Netflix. Legendary would also continue to partner with other companies for streaming, as Sony does not have a streaming service.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In addition to producing American films, Legendary Entertainment has announced various other business endeavors.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2009, the company announced the establishment of a digital division, to be headed by Kathy Vrabeck, that would primarily focus on game development, a move which surprised many industry analysts because of the film industry's previous disengagement with the video game industry. The goal of the division was reoriented in 2012 with the acquisition of Nerdist Industries, LLC, a pop culture blog with an eponymous podcast. Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick announced that he and his partner Peter Levin (founder of GeekChicDaily) would still have complete editorial autonomy and that they would become the new presidents of the digital division, with Levin heading digital strategy and the digital content. In 2014, Legendary acquired both Geek & Sundry, Inc., a YouTube channel and production company and the website Amy Poehler's Smart Girls. On June 10, 2016, LDN announced a subscription streaming service, Alpha, which will include programming from both Nerdist and Geek & Sundry. The Alpha service was shut down on March 31, 2019.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In July 2020, Legendary laid off 30% of the LDN staff. "Variety" reported that "there was a sense that the operations were a money drain on the company’s profitable film and television operations. Those cuts were accelerated by the onset of COVID-19, which has resulted in layoffs and furloughs across the entertainment industry". "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that "the digital brands have become less important to the strategic direction of Legendary in recent years as the online content business has shifted away from the networks that grew big during the early heyday of YouTube stardom. Legendary Digital is not a moneymaker for the business the way its core film and TV divisions are". In April 2021, "CBR" reported that "Geek & Sundry as an original content producer hasn't exactly been operational for a couple of years".


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2010, the company announced the launch of a comic book division called Legendary Comics, LLC under the direction of editor-in-chief Bob Schreck. The first graphic novel published by the company was "Holy Terror" by Frank Miller, which was released in 2011.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2011, the company announced the creation of Legendary Television to focus on developing television productions. The division was headed by Jeremy Elice and a co-financing contract with Warner Bros. Television was signed. However, in 2012, Legendary decided to postpone its expansion into television and put the division on hold while restructuring; the contract with Warner Bros. was terminated and Elice left the company.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2013, Legendary purchased film marketing agency Five33 Ltd. The company, which in the past has worked on marketing campaigns for various studios, will now work exclusively on marketing Legendary's films. Also in 2013, Legendary invested in hiring former head of Warner Bros. Television, Bruce Rosenblum, to head Legendary's television and digital media operations. In December 2013, Legendary acquired television production company Asylum Entertainment, best known for producing sports programming and reality and scripted television series such as "Beyond the Glory" and "The Kennedys".


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2011, the company announced the formation of Legendary East Ltd., a joint venture film production company based in Hong Kong. The purpose of the company is to co-produce films with Chinese companies to bypass Chinese quotas on foreign film releases in the country.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: Under an initial agreement with Chinese film distributor Huayi Brothers International, half of the company was to be owned by the shell corporation Paul Y. Engineering Group, 40% was to be owned by Legendary Entertainment (through holding companies such as Legendary Asian Pacific, LLC or Legendary East Holdings, LLC), and 10% was to owned by the Huayi Brothers International. Legendary East initially hoped to produce one to two globally marketed English-language films per year and finance a quarter of the production of an additional two films per year. The company hoped to raise US$220.5 million through the sale of stock of Paul Y. Engineering Group on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by the end of 2011. However, because financing did not meet the targeted goal, Legendary East scrapped the deal with Huayi Brothers International and continued its efforts to secure financing in 2012.


title: Legendary Entertainment

text: In 2013, Legendary East announced a new agreement with China Film Group. Under the new agreement, the two companies will co-produce multiple films over a three-year period.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Super Smash Bros. is a crossover fighting game series published by Nintendo. The series was created by Masahiro Sakurai, who has directed every game in the series. The series is known for its unique gameplay objective which differs from that of traditional fighters, in that the aim is to increase damage counters and knock opponents off the stage instead of depleting life bars.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: The original "Super Smash Bros." was released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. The series achieved even greater success with the release of "Super Smash Bros. Melee", which was released in 2001 for the GameCube and became the best selling game on that system. A third installment, "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", was released in 2008 for the Wii. Although HAL Laboratory had been the developer for the first two games, the third game was developed through the collaboration of several companies. The fourth installment, "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U", was released in 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, respectively. The 3DS installment was the first for a handheld platform. A fifth installment, "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", was released in 2018 for the Nintendo Switch.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: The series primarily features characters from various Nintendo franchises, including "Super Mario", "Donkey Kong", "The Legend of Zelda", "Metroid", "Yoshi," "Kirby", "Star Fox", and "Pokémon", as well as third-party franchises like "Sonic the Hedgehog", "Street Fighter", and "Final Fantasy". The original "Super Smash Bros." had only 12 playable characters, with the roster count rising for each successive game and later including third-party characters, with "Ultimate" containing every character playable in the previous games. In "Melee", "Brawl", and "Ultimate", some characters are able to transform into different forms that have different styles of play and sets of moves. Every game in the series has been well received by critics, with much praise given to their multiplayer features, spawning a large competitive community that has been featured in several gaming tournaments.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Gameplay in the "Super Smash Bros." series differs from many fighting games. Instead of winning by depleting an opponent's life bar, players seek to launch their opponents off the stage and out of bounds. Characters have a damage total which rises as they take damage, represented by a percentage value that measures up to 999%. As a character's percentage rises, they suffer stronger knockback from enemy attacks. To knock out an opponent, the player must knock that character outside the stage's boundaries in any direction. When a character is launched off the stage, the character can attempt to "recover" by using jumping moves and abilities to return to the stage. Some characters have an easier time recovering onto the stage than others due to their moves and abilities. Additionally, some characters vary in weight, with lighter characters being easier to launch than heavy characters.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Controls are greatly simplified in comparison to other fighting games, with one button used for standard attacks and another used for special attacks. Players can perform different types of moves by holding the directional controls up, down, to the side, or in a neutral position while pressing the attack or special button. As such, each character has four types of ground attacks, mid-air attacks, and special attacks that can be performed. Quickly pressing or tapping a directional input and the attack button together while on the ground allows players to perform a chargeable "Smash Attack", which is generally more powerful than other attacks. When characters are hit by attacks, they receive a hitstun that temporarily disallows any attacks to be made. This allows combos to be performed. A shield button allows players to put up a defensive shield which weakens with repeated use and will leave the player unable to move if broken. Combining the shield button with directional inputs and attack buttons allows the player to also perform dodges, rolls, grabs, and throws. The three basic actions in "Super Smash Bros.", attacking, grabbing, and shielding, are often described using a rock–paper–scissors analogy: attacking beats grabbing, grabbing beats shielding, and shielding beats attacking. When a player knocks another player off of the main platform, they may perform an action called edge-guarding. At the same time the player that has been knocked off will try to recover by jumping back onto the stage and avoiding the other players' edge-guarding.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Another element in the "Super Smash Bros." series is battle items, the abundance of which players can adjust before matches. There are conventional "battering items", with which a player may hit an opponent, such as a home-run bat or a beam sword; throwing items, including Bob-ombs and Koopa shells; and shooting items, either single-shot guns or rapid-fire blasters. Recovery items allow the user to reduce their damage percentage by varying amounts. Poké Balls are special items that release a random Pokémon onto the battlefield to temporarily assist the user. "Brawl" introduced the Assist Trophy item which serves a similar purpose; instead of releasing Pokémon, it summons a character from another series. "Brawl" also introduces the Smash Ball, which when broken allows the fighter to perform a character-specific super attack known as a "Final Smash".


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: The rules that can be used in a match vary depending on the game, but the two most commonly used settings across all games are Time and Stock. Time mode uses a point-based system in which fighters earn points for knocking out their opponents and lose points for being knocked out or self-destructing (i.e. falling out of the stage by themselves). The player with the highest score at the end of the set time limit wins the match. Stock mode, also known as Survival, uses a life-based system in which players are given a set number of lives, known as stock, with each fighter losing a life whenever they are knocked out, becoming eliminated if they run out of lives. The winner is the last fighter standing once all other fighters are eliminated or, if a time limit is applied to the match, the fighter with the most lives remaining once time runs out. In the event of a tie, a Sudden Death match takes place. Here, each of the tied fighters are given a starting damage percentage of 300%, making them easier to launch off the stage, and the last fighter standing will be declared as the winner. In some games this process is repeated if the match ends in another tie.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Gameplay using competitive "Super Smash Bros." rules is usually played in Stock mode with a timer. Items are turned off, and the only tournament-legal stages are those that do not feature hazards and other disruptive elements.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros." was introduced in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. It was released worldwide after selling over a million copies in Japan. It featured eight characters from the start (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, and Pikachu), with four unlockable characters (Luigi, Captain Falcon, Ness, and Jigglypuff), all of them created by Nintendo or one of its second-party developers.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: In "Super Smash Bros.", up to four players can play in multiplayer (Versus) mode, with the specific rules of each match being predetermined by the players. There are two match types that can be chosen: Time, where the person with the most KOs at the end of the set time wins; and stock, where each player has a set number of lives and are eliminated from play when their lives are depleted.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: This game's primary single-player mode, named "Classic Mode" in later series entries, features a series of predetermined opponents the player must defeat. Other single-player modes exist such as Training and several minigames, including "Break the Targets" and "Board the Platforms". All of these were included in the sequel, with the exception of "Board the Platforms".


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: There are nine playable stages in Versus mode, eight based on each of the starting characters (such as Princess Peach's Castle for Mario, Zebes for Samus, and Sector Z for Fox) and the unlockable Mushroom Kingdom, based around motifs from the original "Super Mario Bros.", even containing original sprites and the original version of the Overworld theme from that game.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: A followup for the GameCube, "Super Smash Bros. Melee", released in Japan and North America in late 2001, and in Europe and Australia in May 2002. It had a larger budget and development team than "Super Smash Bros." did and was released to much greater praise and acclaim among critics and consumers. Since its release, "Super Smash Bros. Melee" has sold more than 7 million copies and was the best selling game on the GameCube. "Super Smash Bros. Melee" features 26 characters, of which 15 are available initially, more than doubling the number of characters in its predecessor. There are also 29 stages.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: It introduced two new single-player modes alongside the Classic mode: Adventure mode and All-Star mode. Adventure mode has platforming segments similar to the original's "Race to the Finish" mini-game, and All-Star is a fight against every playable character in the game, allows the player only one life in which damage is accumulated over each battle and a limited number of healing items in between battles. Also in "Melee" is the Home-Run Contest minigame, which replaced Board the Platforms in the original game. Here, fighters will have to send Sandbag out of the stage to get the best distance with a baseball bat while damaging it for ten seconds.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: There are also significantly more multiplayer modes and a tournament mode allowing for 64 different competitors whom can all be controlled by human players, although only up to four players can participate at the same time. Additionally, the game featured alternative battle modes, called "Special Melee," which allows players to make many different alterations to the battle, along with alternative ways to judge a victory, such as through collecting coins throughout the match.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: In place of "Super Smash Bros." character profiles, "Melee" introduced trophies (called "figures" in the Japanese version). The 293 trophies include three different profiles for each playable character, one unlocked in each single-player mode. In addition, unlike its predecessor, "Melee" contains profiles for many Nintendo characters who are either non-playable or do not appear in the game, as well as Nintendo items, stages, enemies, and elements.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Although a third "Super Smash Bros." game had been announced long before E3 2006, Nintendo unveiled its first information in the form of a trailer in 2006, and the game was named "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" and released worldwide in 2008. The game featured a set of third-party characters, Solid Snake of Konami's "Metal Gear" series, and longtime Mario rival Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega's series of the same name. "Brawl" was also the first game in the franchise to support online play, via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and to offer the ability for players to construct their own original stages. The game features a total of 39 playable characters and 41 stages.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Brawl" also features compatibility with four kinds of controllers (the Wii Remote on its side, the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination, the Classic Controller, and the GameCube controller), while its predecessors only used the one controller designed for that system. The player also has the ability to change the configuration of controls and the controller type.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" features a single-player mode known as "The Subspace Emissary". This mode features unique character storylines along with numerous side-scrolling levels and multiple bosses to fight, as well as CG cut scenes explaining the storyline. "The Subspace Emissary" features a new group of antagonists called the Subspace Army, who are led by the Ancient Minister. Some of these enemy characters appeared in previous Nintendo video games, such as Petey Piranha from the "Super Mario" series and a squadron of R.O.B.s based on classic Nintendo hardware. "The Subspace Emissary" also boasts a number of original enemies, such as the Roader, a robotic unicycle; the Bytan, a one-eyed ball-like creature which can replicate itself if left alone; and the Primid, enemies that come in many variations. Though primarily a single-player mode, "The Subspace Emissary" allows for cooperative multiplayer. There are five difficulty levels for each stage, and there is a method of increasing characters' powers during the game. This is done by placing collected stickers onto the bottom of a character's trophy between stages to improve various aspects of a fighter.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: At E3 2011, it was confirmed that a fourth "Super Smash Bros." game would be coming to the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, with the two games being cross-compatible with each other. Sakurai stated that the announcement was made public in order to attract developers needed for the games, as development for the games did not start until May 2012 due to production on "". On June 21, 2012, Nintendo announced that the creation of the games would be a co-production between Sakurai's Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco Entertainment. The games were officially revealed at E3 2013, with new information being released via trailers, Nintendo Direct presentations, and developer posts on Miiverse. The game features 58 characters, 19 of whom are new, and 7 of whom are downloadable. The game was released for Nintendo 3DS in Japan in September 2014, and in North America, Europe, and Australia the following month. The Wii U version was released in North America, Europe, and Australia in November 2014, and in Japan the following month.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: In April 2014, Bandai Namco Entertainment posted a recruitment advertisement on a Japanese career job opportunity website. The recruitment page consisted of a listing for programmers for ""Smash Bros. 6"", which was expected to be released in 2015 for both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The page noted there were 120 game developers working on the project at the time, and that Bandai Namco expected that number to increase to 200. However, shortly after its publication, the page was taken down. In a January 2015 column in "Weekly Famitsu", Sakurai alluded to the possibility of retirement, expressing doubt that he would be able to continue making games if his career continued to be as stressful as it was. In December 2015, Sakurai once again stated that he was not sure if there would be another game in the "Smash Bros." series.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: On March 8, 2018, a teaser for the game was shown during a Nintendo Direct. Sakurai later confirmed that he had worked on the game "in silence, day after day." On March 22, 2018, Nintendo announced that they would host another "Super Smash Bros." Invitational tournament, in which a selected group of players would get to play the game for the first time and compete in a series of matches before a winner is chosen. The tournament took place alongside the "Splatoon 2" World Championship at E3 2018 and was held on June 11–12. Both events were live streamed on Nintendo's official YouTube and Twitch channels. The title was confirmed as "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" at E3 2018, where it was also announced that it would contain all playable characters from every previous game.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: The game was released worldwide on December 7, 2018; according to the review aggregator platform Metacritic, it received "universal critical acclaim" from critics and scored 93 out of 100. In addition to all returning characters, the base game release adds 11 newcomers. Thirteen additional new characters are also available via downloadable content.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Like "Brawl", "Ultimate" features a story mode, known as "World of Light". The plot revolves around the destruction of the "Smash Bros." world at the hands of original villain Galeem. Initially only able to play as Kirby, who survived the attack, the player travels across the wasteland to rescue the other playable fighters, gathering "Spirits" (the remnants of the world's non-playable characters who aid the player in battle) along the way.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: In November 2021, Sakurai stated that the future of "Super Smash Bros." is uncertain, and that there are no plans for a "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" sequel.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Each game in the series has a number of playable characters (referred in the games as "fighters") taken from various gaming franchises, with 83 total across the series. Starting with "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", characters from non-Nintendo franchises began to make playable appearances. In "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U", players were able to customize existing fighters with altered movesets and abilities, as well as making their own Mii fighters that can be given three different fighting styles. There are also other non-playable characters that take the form of enemies, bosses, and summonable power-up items.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros." was developed by HAL Laboratory, an independent affiliate company, during 1998. It began as a prototype created by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata in their spare time, "Dragon King: The Fighting Game", and featured no Nintendo characters. However, Sakurai hit on the idea of including fighters from different Nintendo franchises in order to provide "atmosphere" which he felt was necessary for a home console fighting game, and his idea was approved. Although never acknowledged by Nintendo or any developers behind "Super Smash Bros.", third-party sources have identified Namco's 1995 fighting game "The Outfoxies" as a possible inspiration. The game had a small budget and little promotion, and was originally a Japan-only release, but its huge success saw the game released worldwide. On October 20, 2022, Sakurai, who still had the prototype of "Dragon King: The Fighting Game", demonstrated its gameplay, and its differences from the final product of "Super Smash Bros."


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: HAL Laboratory developed "Super Smash Bros. Melee", with Masahiro Sakurai as the head of production. The game was one of the first games released on the GameCube and highlighted the advancement in graphics from the Nintendo 64. The developers wanted to pay homage to the debut of the GameCube by making an opening full motion video sequence that would attract people's attention to the graphics. "HAL" worked with three separate graphic houses in Tokyo to make the opening sequence. On their official website, the developers posted screenshots and information highlighting and explaining the attention to physics and detail in the game, with references to changes from its predecessor. The "Super Smash Bros." logo, consisting of two lines of different weight crossing within a circle, represented the idea of a franchise crossover, according to Sakurai, naturally dividing the circle into four sections to represent the four-player fighting mode.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: At a pre-E3 2005 press conference, president of Nintendo at the time Satoru Iwata announced the next installment of "Super Smash Bros." was not only already in development for their next gaming console, but hoped it would be a launch game with Wi–Fi compatibility for online play. The announcement was unexpected to the creator of the "Super Smash Bros." series, Masahiro Sakurai. Back in 2003, he had left HAL Laboratory, the company that was in charge with the franchises' development and was never informed of this announcement despite the fact shortly after resigning from the company, Iwata said if a new game was to be made, he would be in charge. It was not until after the conference Sakurai was called to Satoru Iwata's room on the top floor of a Los Angeles hotel, where he was told by Iwata "We'd like you to be involved in the production of the new "Smash Bros.", if possible near the level of director". Although Iwata had said he was hoping for it to be a launch game, Sakurai stated: "I decided to become director. And as of May 2005, I was the only member of the new Smash Bros. development team." Development of the game never actually started until October 2005, when Nintendo opened a new office in Tokyo just for its production. Nintendo also enlisted outside help from various developer studios, mainly Game Arts. Sakurai also stated that these people had spent excessive amounts of time playing "Super Smash Bros. Melee". This team was given access to all the original material and tools from the development of "Melee", courtesy of HAL Laboratory. Also, several "Smash Bros." staff members that reside around the area of the new office joined the project's development.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: On the game's official Japanese website, the developers explain reasons for making particular characters playable and explain why some characters were not available as playable characters upon release. Initially, the development team wanted to replace Ness with Lucas, the main character of "Mother 3" for the Game Boy Advance, but they retained Ness in consideration of delays. The game's creators have included Lucas in the game's sequel, "Super Smash Bros. Brawl". Video game developer Hideo Kojima originally requested Solid Snake, the protagonist of the "Metal Gear" series, to be a playable character in "Super Smash Bros. Melee", but the game was too far in development for him to be included. As with Lucas, development time allowed for his inclusion in "Brawl". Roy and Marth were initially intended to be playable exclusively in the Japanese version of "Super Smash Bros. Melee". However, they received favorable attention during the game's North American localization, leading to the decision for the developers to include them in the Western version. Comparisons have been formed by the developers between characters which have very similar moves to each other on the website. Such characters were referred to as "clones" in the media.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: At the Nintendo Media Conference at E3 2007, it was announced by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé that "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" would be released on December 3, 2007, in the Americas. However, just 2 months before its anticipated December release, the development team asked for more time to work on the game. During the Nintendo Conference on October 10, 2007, Nintendo Co., Ltd. president Iwata announced the delay.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: On October 11, 2007, George Harrison of Nintendo of America announced that "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" would be released on February 10, 2008, in North America. On January 15, 2008, the game's release was pushed back one week in Japan to January 31 and nearly a month in the Americas to March 9. On April 24, 2008, it was confirmed by Nintendo of Europe that "Brawl" will be released in Europe on June 27.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Director Masahiro Sakurai first announced that a new "Super Smash Bros." game was planned for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U at E3 2011 in June 2011, but development only officially began following the completion of Sakurai's other project, "", in March 2012. The game was later revealed to be a joint-project between Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco Games, with various staff members from Bandai Namco's "Soulcalibur" and "Tekken" series assisting Sakurai in development. Sakurai, who was previously the sole person responsible for balance in the series' multiple fighters, has involved more staff to further improve the game's competitive balance. The game was officially revealed at E3 2013 on June 11, 2013, during a Nintendo Direct presentation. Along with screenshots being posted each weekday on the game's official website and Miiverse community, various cinematic trailers were released, introducing each of the brand new fighters. Sakurai chose to use these trailers, which benefit from Internet sharing, as opposed to including a story campaign similar to the Subspace Emissary mode featured in "Brawl", as he believed the impact of seeing the mode's cinematic cutscenes for the first time was ruined by people uploading said scenes to video sharing websites.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: At E3 2013, Sakurai stated that the tripping mechanic introduced in "Brawl" was removed, with him also stating that the gameplay was between the fast-paced and competitive style of "Melee" and the slower and more casual style of "Brawl". While the games didn't feature cross-platform play between the Wii U and 3DS, due to each version featuring certain exclusive stages and gamemodes, there is an option to transfer customized characters and items between the two versions. The game builds upon the previous game's third-party involvement with the addition of third-party characters such as Capcom's Mega Man and Bandai Namco's Pac-Man, as well as the return of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. This involvement expands beyond playable characters, as other third-party characters, such as Ubisoft's Rayman, are also included in the game as trophies. The addition of Mii characters was made in response to the growing number of requests from fans to have their dream characters included in the game. To prevent potential bullying, as well as to maintain game balance online, Mii Fighters cannot be used in online matches against strangers. The decision to release the Wii U version at a later date from the 3DS version was made to allow each version to receive a dedicated debugging period. Hardware limitations on the Nintendo 3DS led to various design choices, such as the removal of mid-match transformations, the absence of the Ice Climbers, and the lack of Circle Pad Pro support.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros." features music from some of Nintendo's popular gaming franchises. While many are newly arranged for the game, some songs are taken directly from their sources. The music for the Nintendo 64 game was composed by Hirokazu Ando, who later returned as sound and music director in "Melee". "Melee" also features tracks composed by Tadashi Ikegami, Shougo Sakai, and Takuto Kitsuta. "Brawl" featured the collaboration of 38 contracted composers, including "Final Fantasy" series composer Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the main theme. Like in "Brawl", "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U" featured many original and re-arranged tracks from various different gaming franchises from a variety of different composers and arrangers. Both versions have multiple musical tracks that can be selected and listened to using the returning "My Music" feature, including pieces taken directly from earlier "Super Smash Bros." games. The 3DS and Switch games allow players to listen to their music from the sound menu while the system is in sleep/handheld mode. "Ultimate" continued the trend of multiple composers and arrangers working on remixed tracks, having over 800 in total.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Three soundtrack albums for the series have been released. An album with the original music for "Super Smash Bros." was released in Japan by Teichiku Records in 2000. In 2003, Nintendo released "Smashing...Live!", a live orchestrated performance of various pieces featured in "Melee" by the New Japan Philharmonic. A two-disc promotional soundtrack titled "A Smashing Soundtrack" was available for Club Nintendo members who registered both the "3DS" and "Wii U" games between November 21, 2014, and January 13, 2015.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: Reviews for the "Super Smash Bros." series are usually positive. The multiplayer mode in every game is usually highly praised; however, single-player modes have not always been viewed as highly.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros." received praise for its multiplayer mode. Nintendo Power listed the series as being one of the greatest multiplayer experiences in Nintendo history, describing it as infinitely replayable due to its special moves and close-quarters combat. There were criticisms, however, such as the game's scoring being difficult to follow. In addition, the single-player mode was criticized for its perceived difficulty and lack of features.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros. Melee" generally received a positive reception from reviewers, most of whom credited "Melee" expansion of gameplay features from "Super Smash Bros". Focusing on the additional features, GameSpy commented that "Melee really scores big in the 'we've added tons of great extra stuff' department." Reviewers compared the game favorably to "Super Smash Bros."—IGN's Fran Mirabella III stated that it was "in an entirely different league than the N64 version"; GameSpot's Miguel Lopez praised the game for offering an advanced "classic-mode" compared to its predecessor, while detailing the Adventure Mode as "really a hit-or-miss experience." Despite a mixed response to the single-player modes, most reviewers expressed the game's multiplayer mode as a strong component of the game. In their review of the game, GameSpy stated that "you'll have a pretty hard time finding a more enjoyable multiplayer experience on any other console."


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Brawl" received a perfect score from the Japanese magazine "Famitsu". The reviewers praised the variety and depth of the single-player content, the unpredictability of Final Smashes, and the dynamic fighting styles of the characters. Thunderbolt Games gave the game 10 out of 10, calling it "a vastly improved entry into the venerable series". Chris Slate of "Nintendo Power" also awarded "Brawl" a perfect score in its March 2008 issue, calling it "one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced". IGN critic Matt Casamassina, in his February 11 "Wii-k in Review" podcast, noted that although "Brawl" is a "solid fighter," it does have "some issues that need to be acknowledged," including "long loading times" and repetition in "The Subspace Emissary."


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros. for 3DS" and "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" both garnered critical praise and were commercially successful, holding current ratings of 85/100 and 92/100 on Metacritic and 86.10% and 92.39% on GameRankings. Reviewers have particularly noted the large, diverse character roster, the improvements to game mechanics, and the variety of multiplayer options. Some criticisms in the 3DS version include a lack of single-player modes and issues concerning the 3DS hardware, such as the size of characters on the smaller screen when zoomed out and latency issues during both local and online multiplayer. There were also reports of players damaging their 3DS Circle Pads while playing the game excessively. The Wii U version's online play quality was mildly criticized for some inconsistency, but has overall been critically acclaimed. Daniel Dischoff of Game Revolution stated "It's true that Super Smash Bros. evolves every time with regard to new features, items, and characters to choose from. While your favorite character may not return or a few annoying pickups may force you to turn off items altogether, this represents the biggest leap forward Smashers have seen yet." Daniel Starky at GameSpot criticized the inconsistent online performance in the game, but still called it an "incredible game", noting "With the Wii U release, "Smash Bros." has fully realized its goals." Jose Otero from IGN, praising the replayability of the game, states "Nearly every aspect of "Smash Wii U" seems fine-tuned not only to appeal to the nostalgia of long-time Nintendo fans, but also to be accessible to new players."


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Super Smash Bros." sold 1.4 million copies in Japan, and 2.3 million in the U.S., with a total of 5.55 million units worldwide. "Melee" sold over 7 million units worldwide, becoming the best-selling GameCube game.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: "Brawl" sold 1.524 million units in Japan , and sold 1.4 million units in its first week in the United States, becoming Nintendo of America's fastest selling game. The 3DS version sold over a million copies in its first weekend on sale in Japan, and has sold more than 9.63 million copies worldwide . "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" became the fastest-selling Wii U game to date, selling 3.39 million units worldwide within just two months of availability, beating the record previously held by "Mario Kart 8". As of September 2021, it has sold 5.38 million copies worldwide. "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" on Nintendo Switch has set new record highs for the series and for the system. It sold an estimate of 5.6 million copies in global sales during its first week of launch, beating out records previously held by games such as "", "Super Mario Odyssey", and "". In Japan, "Ultimate" outsold the records held by "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" with 2.6 million copies sold in five weeks. It is also the third best-selling game for the Nintendo Switch and the best-selling fighting game of all time, with 28.82 million copies sold worldwide as of June 30, 2022.


title: Super Smash Bros.

text: The "Super Smash Bros." series has been widely played as a competitive video game, with several of the games in the series having been featured in high-profile tournaments, including Major League Gaming (MLG) and Evolution Championship Series (EVO), among others. The first publicized professional "Smash Bros." tournaments were held for "Super Smash Bros. Melee" in early 2002. Current major "Smash Bros." annual tournament series include GENESIS, EVO, Super Smash Con and The Big House. The competitive "Smash Bros." community is well known among the wider fighting game community for its decentralized, grassroots scene, a byproduct of Nintendo's historical reluctance to directly promote the scene.


title: Source Code

text: Source Code is a 2011 American science fiction action thriller film directed by Duncan Jones and written by Ben Ripley on spec. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens, who is sent into an eight-minute digital recreation of a real-life train explosion, tasked with determining the identity of the terrorist who bombed it. Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright play supporting roles.


title: Source Code

text: It had its world premiere on March 11, 2011, at South by Southwest and was released by Summit Entertainment on April 1, 2011, in North America and Europe. It received critical acclaim and was a box office success, grossing over $147.3 million on a $31.9 million budget.


title: Source Code

text: U.S. Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens wakes up on a Metra commuter train going into Chicago. He is disoriented, as his last memory was of flying a mission in Afghanistan. However, to the world around him – including his friend Christina Warren and his reflection in the train's windows and mirrors – he appears to be a different man: a school teacher named Sean Fentress. As he expresses his confusion to Christina, the train explodes while passing by another train, killing everyone aboard.


title: Source Code

text: Stevens abruptly awakens in a dimly lit cockpit. Communicating through a video screen, Air Force Captain Colleen Goodwin verifies Stevens' identity and tells him of his mission to find the train bomber before sending him back to the moment he awoke on the train. Believing he is being tested in a simulation, Stevens finds the bomb in a vent inside the lavatory but is unable to identify the bomber. Still thinking he’s in a simulation, Stevens leaves the bomb and goes back down to the main cabin before the train explodes again.


title: Source Code

text: Stevens again reawakens in his capsule and after demanding to be briefed, learns that the train explosion actually happened and that it was merely the first attack of a suspected series. He is sent back yet again, eight minutes before the explosion, to identify the bomber. This time, he disembarks the train (with Christina) to follow a suspect. This turns out to be a dead end, the train still explodes in the distance, and Stevens is killed by a passing train after falling onto the tracks while interrogating a suspect.


title: Source Code

text: The capsule power supply malfunctions as Stevens reawakens. He claims to have saved Christina, but Dr. Rutledge tells him that she was saved only inside the "Source Code". Rutledge explains that the Source Code is an experimental machine that reconstructs the past using the dead passengers' residual collective memories of eight minutes before their deaths. Therefore, the only thing that matters is finding the bomber to prevent the upcoming second attack in Chicago.


title: Source Code

text: On his next run-in, Stevens learns that he was reported as killed in action two months earlier. He confronts Goodwin, who reveals that he is missing most of his body, is on life support and hooked up to neural sensors. The capsule and his healthy body are "manifestations" made by his mind to make sense of the environment. Stevens is angry at this forced imprisonment. Rutledge offers to terminate him after the mission, and Stevens eventually accepts.


title: Source Code

text: After numerous attempts, including being arrested by train security for trying to obtain a weapon, Stevens identifies the bomber through a fallen wallet, nihilistic domestic terrorist Derek Frost. He memorizes Frost's license and vehicle registration plates. Discovering a dirty bomb built inside a van owned by Frost, as Christina follows him, both are shot dead by Frost.


title: Source Code

text: Outside Source Code, Stevens relays his knowledge to Goodwin, which helps the police arrest Frost and prevents the second attack. He is congratulated for completing his mission. Rutledge secretly reneges on his deal to let Stevens die, as he is still the only candidate able to enter Source Code.


title: Source Code

text: Being more sympathetic to his plight, Goodwin sends Stevens back one last time and promises to disconnect his life support after eight minutes. This time, he sets a date with Christina, defuses the bomb, apprehends Frost, and reports him to the police. He calls his father under the guise of a fellow soldier and reconciles with him, and sends Goodwin an email. After eight minutes, Goodwin terminates Stevens' life support.


title: Source Code

text: As the world around him continues to progress beyond eight minutes, Stevens confirms his suspicion that Source Code is not merely a simulation, but rather a machine that allows him to create alternate timelines. He and Christina leave the train and go on a date. In the same (alternate) reality, Goodwin receives Stevens' message. He tells her of Source Code's true capability and asks her to help the alternate-reality version of him.


title: Source Code

text: David Hahn, the boy depicted in the 2003 made-for-television documentary "The Nuclear Boy Scout", was the inspiration for the antagonist Derek Frost. In an article published by the Writers Guild of America, screenwriter Ben Ripley is described as providing the original pitch to the studios responsible for producing "Source Code":


title: Source Code

text: The original spec script was originally sold to Universal Pictures in 2007 but was ranked on The Black List of top unproduced screenplays.


title: Source Code

text: After seeing "Moon", Gyllenhaal lobbied for Jones to direct "Source Code"; Jones liked the fast-paced script; as he later said: "There were all sorts of challenges, and puzzles, and I kind of like solving puzzles, so it was kind of fun for me to work out how to achieve all these difficult things that were set up in the script."


title: Source Code

text: In the ending scene, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan's characters are seen walking through Millennium Park and making their way to the Cloud Gate. In a 2011 interview, Gyllenhaal discussed how director Duncan Jones felt that the structure was a metaphor for the movie's subject matter and aimed for it to feature at the beginning and end of the movie.


title: Source Code

text: Principal photography began on March 1, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, and ended on April 29, 2010. Several scenes were shot in Chicago, Illinois, specifically at Millennium Park and the Main Building at the Illinois Institute of Technology, although the sign showing the name of the latter, in the intersection of 31st Street and S LaSalle Street, was edited out.


title: Source Code

text: Initially, some filming was scheduled at the Ottawa Train Station in Ottawa, Ontario, but was canceled for lack of an agreement with VIA Rail.


title: Source Code

text: Editing took place in Los Angeles. In July 2010, the film was in the visual effects stage of postproduction. Most of the VFX work was handled by Montreal studios, including Modus FX, Rodeo FX, Oblique FX, and Fly Studio. Jones had confirmed that the film's soundtrack would be composed by Clint Mansell, in his second collaboration with the composer. Mansell was announced as no longer scoring the soundtrack due to time constraints.


title: Source Code

text: The film received its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 11, 2011. Summit Entertainment released the film to theaters in the United States and Canada on April 1, 2011. In France, the film was released on April 20, 2011.


title: Source Code

text: "Source Code" was released on DVD and Blu-ray simultaneously in the United States on July 26, 2011, with the United Kingdom release on DVD and Blu-ray (as well as a combined DVD/Blu-ray package) on August 15, 2011. In the UK, there was also a Blu-ray/DVD "Double Play" release featuring a lenticular slipcover.


title: Source Code

text: "Source Code" grossed $54.7 million in the United States and Canada and $92.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $147.3 million, against a production budget of $32 million.


title: Source Code

text: The film was released in theaters on April 1, 2011. In the United States and Canada, "Source Code" was released theatrically in 2,961 conventional theaters. The film made $14.8 million and debuted second on its opening weekend.


title: Source Code

text: Despite its grosses, according to Director Duncan Jones, the studio claims that the film has never turned a profit, which is attributed to Hollywood accounting.


title: Source Code

text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 92% approval rating, based on an aggregation of 261 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus reads: "Finding the human story amidst the action, director Duncan Jones and charming Jake Gyllenhaal craft a smart, satisfying sci-fi thriller." Metacritic awarded the film an average score of 74/100, based on 41 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Source Code

text: Critics have compared "Source Code" with both the 1993 film "Groundhog Day" and British film director Tony Scott's 2006 time-altering science fiction film "Déjà Vu": in the latter case, the similarity of plotline in the protagonist's determination to change the past was highlighted, and his emotional commitment to save the victim, rather than simply try to discover the identity of the perpetrator of the crime. Alternatively, it has been described as a "cross between "Groundhog Day" and "Murder on the Orient Express"", while "The Arizona Republic" film critic Bill Goodykoontz says that comparing "Source Code" to "Groundhog Day" is doing a disservice to "Source Code" enthralling "mind game".


title: Source Code

text: Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called the film "Confounding, exhilarating, challenging – and the best movie [he's] seen so far in 2011." Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, calling it "an ingenious thriller" where "you forgive the preposterous because it takes you to the perplexing". Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" called Ben Ripley's script "cleverly constructed" and a film "crisply directed by Duncan Jones". He also praised the "cast with the determination and ability to really sell its story". CNN called Ripley's script "ingenious" and the film "as authoritative an exercise in fractured storytelling as Christopher Nolan's "Memento"". He also commented that Gyllenhaal is "more compelling here than he's been in a long time".


title: Vito Genovese

text: Vito Genovese (; November 21, 1897 – February 14, 1969) was an Italian-born American mobster who mainly operated in the United States. Genovese rose to power during Prohibition as an enforcer in the American Mafia. A long-time associate and childhood friend of Lucky Luciano, Genovese took part in the Castellammarese War and helped shape the rise of the Mafia and organized crime in the United States. He would later lead Luciano's crime family, which was renamed the Genovese crime family in his honor.


title: Vito Genovese

text: Along with Luciano, Genovese helped the expansion of the heroin trade to an international level. In 1937, he fled to Italy, and for a brief period during World War II, he supported Benito Mussolini's regime in Italy for fear of being deported back to the United States to face murder charges. He returned to the United States in 1945. Genovese served as mentor to Vincent "Chin" Gigante, the future boss of the Genovese crime family.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In 1957, Genovese vied for the boss of bosses title by ordering the murder of Albert Anastasia and the botched murder attempt of Frank Costello. Immediately following this, he called a mafia summit to consolidate his power, but the meeting was raided by the police. In 1959, his reign was cut short as he was convicted on narcotics conspiracy charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison. While he and his underling Joe Valachi were in prison together, Valachi killed an inmate he thought to be a hitman sent by Genovese. Valachi then became a government witness. Genovese died in prison on February 14, 1969.


title: Vito Genovese

text: Vito Genovese was born on November 21, 1897, in Risigliano, a "frazione" in the "comune" of Tufino, in the Province of Naples, Italy. His father was Frances Felice Genovese and his mother Nunziata Aluotto. Vito had a sister Giovanna Jennie (m. Richard Prisco) along with two brothers, Michael and Carmine, who also belonged to Genovese's crime family. His cousin, Michael, became boss of the Pittsburgh crime family.


title: Vito Genovese

text: As a child in Italy, Genovese completed school only to the American equivalent of the fifth grade. In 1913, when Genovese was 15, his family immigrated to the United States onboard the "SS Taormina" and took up residence in Little Italy, Manhattan. Genovese started his criminal career stealing merchandise from pushcart vendors and running errands for mobsters. He later collected money from people who played illegal lotteries. At 19, Genovese spent a year in prison for illegal possession of a firearm.


title: Vito Genovese

text: By the 1920s, Genovese started working for Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, the boss of a powerful Manhattan gang that would evolve into the family he would eventually lead. Charlie Luciano and his close associates started working for gambler Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein, who immediately saw the potential windfall from Prohibition and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business. Luciano, Frank Costello, and Genovese started their own bootlegging operation with financing from Rothstein.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In 1930, Genovese was indicted on counterfeiting charges when police found $1 million of counterfeit US currency in a Bath Beach, Brooklyn workshop. Later in 1930, Genovese allegedly murdered Gaetano Reina, the leader of a Bronx-based gang. Reina had been a Masseria ally, but Masseria decided to kill him after he began to suspect him of secretly helping Masseria's archrival, Brooklyn gang leader Salvatore Maranzano. On February 26, 1930, Genovese allegedly ambushed Reina as he was leaving his mistress's house in the Bronx and shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun. Masseria then took direct control of the Reina gang.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In early 1930, the Castellammarese War broke out between Masseria and Maranzano. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer the death of his boss, Masseria, in return for receiving Masseria's rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command. On April 15, 1931, Luciano had lured Masseria to a meeting where he was murdered at a restaurant called Nuova Villa Tammaro on Coney Island. While they played cards, Luciano allegedly excused himself to the bathroom, with the gunmen reportedly being Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel; Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova drove the getaway car, but legend has it that he was too shaken up to drive away and had to be shoved out of the driver's seat by Siegel. Luciano took over Masseria's family, with Genovese as his underboss.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In September 1931, Luciano and Genovese planned the murder of Salvatore Maranzano. Luciano had received word that Maranzano was planning to kill him and Genovese, and prepared a hit team to kill Maranzano first. On September 10, 1931, when Maranzano summoned Luciano, Genovese, and Frank Costello to a meeting at his office, they knew Maranzano would kill them there. Instead, Luciano sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people. They had been secured with the aid of Meyer Lansky and Siegel. Luciano subsequently created The Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In 1931, Genovese's first wife, Donata Ragone, died of tuberculosis and he quickly announced his intention to marry Anna Petillo, who was already married to Gerard Vernotico.


title: Vito Genovese

text: On March 16, 1932, Vernotico was found strangled to death on a Manhattan rooftop, and on March 28, 1932 Genovese married his widow, Anna, who was Genovese's cousin via her mother, Concetta y Cassini Genovese.


title: Vito Genovese

text: In 1934, Genovese allegedly ordered the murder of mobster Ferdinand Boccia. Genovese and Boccia had conspired to cheat a wealthy gambler out of $150,000 in a high-stakes card game. After the game, Boccia demanded a share of $35,000 because he had introduced the victim to Genovese. Rather than pay Boccia anything, Genovese decided to have him murdered. On September 19, 1934, Genovese and five associates allegedly shot and killed Boccia in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.


title: Vito Genovese

text: On June 18, 1936, Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison as a result of his conviction on pandering. With Luciano's imprisonment, Genovese became acting boss of the Luciano crime family.


title: Vito Genovese

text: On November 25, 1936, Genovese became a naturalized United States citizen in New York City. In 1937, fearing prosecution for the Boccia murder, Genovese fled to Italy with $750,000 cash and settled in the city of Nola, near Naples. With Genovese's departure, Costello became acting boss.