Today Plastics News senior reporter Bill Bregar wrote about the decision by Morrow County, Ohio, Prosecutor Charles Howland not to file charges against Christopher Filos, the former owner of the now-shuttered HPM machinery company.

Because so many readers are interested, I'll also share some additional detail -- this copy of a Jan. 24 letter from Howland to Randa Wagner, editor of the Morrow County Sentinel, explaining the decision.

The letter starts below, after these links to the Plastics News story, "No charges against HPM's Filos," and the Sentinel's version, "Hopes for felony charges against former HPM owner fade for county prosecutor."

Re: Theft of Employee Benefits at HPM

Dear Ms. Wagner:

Beginning in January of 2010 the Morrow County Prosecutor's Office has been investigating the theft of employee benefits at HPM. In January of that year, the Mount Gilead Police Department executed a search warrant for employee records held at HPM. The result of this search produced thousands of documents.

With limited funding we were not able to hire an accountant to sift through these records. A local accountant was of great help to us in reviewing the financial records. In addition to the local accountant, we were able to enlist the aid of the United States Department of Labor. This federal agency was kind enough to send us a Senior Investigator, Ms. Theresa Schlecht.

Early last fall, Investigator Schlecht sent us a three page memorandum concerning the theft of employee benefits. The investigator compiled the records she analyzed consisting of over 100 pages of records and presented those records to the Prosecutor's Office. In a nut shell what happened at HPM is as follows:

1. On May 1, 2009, Chris Filos entered into contract with Anthem to provide health insurance for thirty-six employees and eight former employees. Mr. Filos paid Anthem $30,000 for the first month's premium. Mr. Filos did not make any payments to Anthem for the months of June and July 2009. Anthem then canceled the health insurance effective May 31, 2009.
2. During the months of June and July 2009, HPM employees and eight former employees paid a total of $22,123.56 for health insurance. For the current employees these funds were paid out of their paychecks. The former employees were sending in payments for Cobra coverage.

3. The funds paid by the employees and former employees were not returned to them or used for health insurance purposes. Instead, the funds were used to pay for other expenses of the business.

The Morrow County Prosecutor's Office sent out letters to thirty-six employees and the eight former employees, who were the alleged victims in the matter. The purpose of the letter was to set up a meeting for January 18, 2012 to determine whether the victims wished to pursue charges. Out of the forty-four letters, we received six responses. Three alleged victims appeared for the meeting and two out of the three alleged victims lived outside of Morrow County.

I had hoped that at least fifteen or twenty would show up so that the case would continue to be in the felony range. Of that group we were hoping that they would elect four or five individuals to speak on the group's behalf at the grand jury. Without the participation of the victims, we cannot go forward.

Individually, the amounts taken were small. The events had occurred three years ago, and the victims have moved on with their lives. Unfortunately, the State of Ohio will be unable to go forward prosecuting the alleged theft of $22,000 from 44 victims.

The Morrow County Prosecutor commends the efforts of all those people and agencies that participated in the investigation of this matter. The investigation of HPM involved the efforts of the Mt. Gilead Police Department, a local accountant and the United States Labor Department. It was a very good effort by our local police department and a local professional working with a federal agency to complete a difficult investigation concerning an allegation of financial misconduct. The Morrow County Prosecutor's Office thanks all of those agencies and people involved in the investigation.

Sincerely,

Charles S. Howland
Morrow County Prosecutor

For a lot of manufacturers, finding skilled employees is one of the biggest challenges these days, as the United States recovers from the recession of 2007-2009.

William Hoffer, president of injection molder Hoffer Plastics Corp., recently got a chance to stress the importance of that issue when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin visited the company's 365,000 square foot plant in South Elgin, Ill.

The visit was part of a state-wide tour of businesses that are "doing well in the recession and hiring people."

According to Hoffer, Durbin participated in a roundtable discussion with Hoffer executives and representatives from local business and educational organizations about the ACT WorkKeys assessment program, which administers a battery of tests that measures an individual's proficiency and suitability for various jobs.

"This skilled workforce initiative is so important," Hoffer told Durbin.

Last year Hoffer added 18 employees whose reading skills and qualifications were certified by the WorkKeys assessment process. That helped the company streamline the screening, interviewing and hiring processes.

According to the company, Durbin agreed to work with WorkKeys representatives and facilitate contact with state officials for next steps.

(Below is a photo of Bill Hoffer talking to Sen. Durbin in the molding plant, courtesy of Hoffer Plastics.)

We've seen this story hundreds of times -- which type of bag is better, paper or plastic? Frequently the coverage is not complimentary to plastic.

Toronto's The Globe and Mail deserves credit for bringing some balance to its Feb. 1 report, "Which is greener, paper or plastic? You might be surprised."

The story focuses on what types of bags local retailers use, and how some of them explain the decision to their customers.

The story isn't entirely pro-plastic, despite what the headline may imply. But Augusta Dwyer covers both the pluses and minuses of the different options in a balanced way.

That's good for consumers, who need facts to help make decisions -- not one-sided lectures.

Toronto retailers have been using fewer plastic bags since 2009, when they were required to start charging consumers 5 cents per bag.

That's resulted in a 75 percent drop in plastic bag use, according to the story.

Top industrial designers are a bit like rock stars -- well known in their fields, and frequently known for their quirky personalities.

Last weekend one was featured in The New York Times' Sunday Magazine -- including enough plastics manufacturing references to make Plastics Blog readers smile.

The story, "Is There Anything Marc Newson Hasn't Designed?" profiles Marc Newson, called "the most acclaimed and influential designer of his generation" -- and that's just on his own firm's website.

Many of Newson's creations are made from plastic, and the feature story doesn't skimp on plasticky details -- how often do you get to read a New York Times Sunday Magazine story that mention parting lines, vacuum forming, and rotational molding -- within the first few graphs?

Another highlight: a list of Newson's least-favorite industrial designs. Is that opportunity I hear knocking?

I'm at the Plastics News Executive Forum today, and this morning's session featured several speakers who talked about the value of collaborating with industrial designers. More on that later .. for now, check out the Times feature on megastar designer Newson.

Forget about moon colonies. A new thermoset composite, developed in part by Owens Corning through a joint development program with Lockheed Martin under the name Applied NanoStructured Solutions LLC, provides electrical magnetic interference shielding for vital components on the Juno satellite, which will orbit Jupiter to provide the best view yet of that planet.

The hybrid composite includes carbon enhanced reinforcements, produced by ANS.

Lockheed Martin describes the part as providing: "contoured supports to prevent thermal blanketing from interfering with the three solar array support mechanisms. The supports also provide an electrostatic discharge path. During its 5-year journey to Jupiter, the Lockheed Martin-made Juno spacecraft will rely on solar energy to power it computers and instruments."

Thanks to Plastics News staff reporter Rhoda Miel for today's post -- she discovered the project at the Society of Plastics Engineers Topcon event in San Antonio, Texas.

I'm praising one company today for its sustainability message, so forgive me for going negative on two others.

My targets -- Repurpose Compostables Inc. and Bed Bath & Beyond stores, for their misleading messages about line of compostable cups made from polylactic acid.

A few weeks ago PlasticsNews.com posted a story about the cups from our sister publication Waste & Recycling News.

The original WRN story said: "Repurpose cups are made from polylactic acid -- made from corn -- and require 65 percent less carbon dioxide to make than plastic, the company said. The lids also are compostable, and no plastic means the cups are nontoxic."

Plastics industry defender and consulting engineer Allan Griff spotted that paragraph and sent me a quick note: "I assume the cupmaker said this, but PLA is a plastic, isn't it?"

Absolutely right, I replied, so I quickly corrected the story.

But Griff wasn't finished. He did some research on what else Repurpose and Bed Bath were saying about the cups, and he found more misleading information.

Both companies were openly contrasting their PLA product with "plastic," he said, feeding the public's fear of the plastics industry.

Griff found this on the Bed Bath & Beyond site:

The plant-based cup is made from corn, not oil like traditional disposable cups, so it's non-toxic and BPA free. It also lowers your carbon footprint, and uses soy based inks, so it is compatible with a zero waste program. Includes set of 12 cups and 12 lids.

As Griff points out, mentioning BPA in a commercial message about foam cups is like putting "no trans fats" on a water bottle label. Of course there's no bisphenol A. There's none in polystyrene cups, either.

So he added this review to the company's website, in the consumer comments section:

BB&B misinforms us. The cup material may be compostable, but who does this at home, and how many cities do it? As for petroleum, it takes plenty of petrobased energy to grow the corn and convert it to the compostable plastic (yes, plastic) PLA. As for carbon dioxide, by far the biggest producers are heating, cooling, lighting and transportation, and all this greenwashing is really a distraction from having to deal with room temperatures, lighting waste, and capricious car use.

He did some more checking and found that the cup maker, Repurpose, said this about itself:

Repurpose was founded in 2009 by a group of young environmental entrepreneurs, looking for quality solutions to the problem of single-use petroleum-based plastic products ... its mission [is] to replace all single-use disposable plastics with high quality, innovative, plant-based alternatives. Repurpose makes products from plants, not petroleum, using Ingeo resin.

Its FAQ section sometimes calls the cups polymers, but stresses the differences between PLA and plastic. For example, it says: "Repurpose products are now available to consumers and to businesses allowing everyone the opportunity to lessen their dependence on oil, lower their carbon footprint, and find non-toxic, safe alternatives to plastic."

Looking further, Griff found more information that he considered misleading.

One section says: "The revolutionary new insulated cup requires no sleeve, uses 65 percent less CO2 than a traditional cup to produce, and can be composted in 90 days."

Griff wrote to me: "But what are they talking about? We don't use CO2 to make cups. And we want to get it out of the atmosphere, not leave more in!

"What's a "traditional cup" now? Do they mean the foam cup, or the Starbuck Standard -- a paper cup with PE coating and a paper sleeve? If they mean that the manufacture of the cup uses less energy and production of energy creates CO2, that's creating less, not using less! And if they compare with paper as traditional, doesn't paper degenerate in composting as well?

"And if they compare [Repurpose cups] with foam cups, I'm not sure it takes more energy to produce them. The biggest energy impact of the foam cups arises from their lightness and volume, which means fewer cups per truck and thus more truck fuel per cup to ship it to its point of sale/use. I don't think they think that way. They got the words "less CO2" together, that sounds green and that's enough for them."

Did I mention that Griff is a pit bull when it comes to defending plastics against misinformation?

What's the next step? Griff is sharing his correspondence with the American Chemistry Council's plastics division, and he's also including it in his file of topics to discuss in a course he teaches at the University of California Berkeley Adult Extension program, "Plastics in the Environment."

That's not a typo -- Griff is teaching a course on plastics in the environment at Berkeley. Plastics Blog readers in California should consider enrolling -- it's sure to be both informative and entertaining.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to share Griff's efforts to shine the light on some companies that are using "bolonium" [one of his favorite terms] to prey on public plastophobia.

Well done, Allan Griff. Keep up the good work.

I don't expect to see commercial messages that reference plastic resin consumption during an NFL game.

But in commercials that ran last weekend during the football playoffs, Glad Products Co. chose to highlight source reduction achieved by its its Tall Kitchen trash bag line.

According to the ads, the bags are stronger, yet use less plastic, allowing the company to save 6.5 million pounds of plastic per year.

Or as the company puts it, the equivalent of keeping 140 million extra trash bags out of landfills annually.

Seems like a simple, clear message. But will the public understand? Can consumers be convinced that source reduction is a legitimate path to product sustainability?

It might be a tough sell, since many consumers are pre-programmed to think that the only way for a product to be sustainable is for it to be biodegradable or contain recycled content.

But Glad Products deserves credit for this very high profile attempt at educating customers about source reduction -- a strategy that's widely used by plastics processors.

Say you work for an injection molder that has closed at least 10 plants in three years. Would you come to work every day thinking it might be your last?

That's the perspective of a Fortis Plastics LLC worker who sent this message last night:

"I am a current employee at Fortis Plastics in Carlyle Ill. I would like to send my thoughts and prayers out to those employees who lost their jobs in the recent plant shutdowns.

"Since the closing of the Ohio plant, we are now mandated to work 60 + hrs a week -- [we] went from 8-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts and we have no [human resources] department, and yet we are still being told our jobs are safe.

"We have probably around 200 employees who all fear for their jobs. But our eyes are open -- we see what happens on a day-to-day basis and know it's just a matter of time before our mold injection equipment hits the auction.

"People: these big corporations do not care what happens to us men and women working 60 hours per week to support our families. ... Thank you, good luck and God bless you all."

The worker added some information about operations at the plant that I won't include here because I can't confirm them -- the company has not commented on our extensive coverage the past few months.

I imagine the workers and the managers in Carlyle are in a tough spot. How do they keep up morale?

Fortis formed in 2008 when Monomoy Capital Partners acquired and combined the custom molding divisions of Leggett & Platt Inc. and Atlantis Plastics Inc. As recently as 2010 the company was a major injection molder -- Fortis tied for 13th in Plastics News' 2010 ranking of North American molders with estimated sales of $280 million.

But 2011 was a difficult year for the company. First came word that it was closing plants in Poplar Bluff and Fort Smith, then its corporate headquarters and molding plant in South Bend. Some of the closings were tied to shifting work at Whirlpool Corp.

Now auctioneers are in the process of selling more than 130 injection presses and 20 extruders at four closed Fortis plants -- and workers in Carlyle are wondering what the future holds for them.

The industry has been buzzing with the need to do something about the skills gap in manufacturing.

For the upcoming Plastics News Executive Forum, this subject is at the forefront. The keynote address will be delivered by Gardner Carrick, senior director of strategic initiatives with Washington-based Manufacturing Institute. His address will be based on MI's 2011 Skills Gap study done in conjunction with Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Now, a manufacturer within the plastics industry is doing its part. Machinery maker Milacron LLC of Cincinnati, has announced its own initiative to attract and cultivate talent. For college students, Milacron has announced that it will offer up to 10 $1,000 scholarships each year to help new Milacron employees pay for continuing with their postsecondary technical education. Milacron also is reinstating a program to provide co-op and apprenticeship training for high school seniors. The company is focusing on co-op programs with vocational schools in Southwestern Ohio, such as Great Oaks Career campuses, a system that serves 35 school districts in that region.

The Manufacturing Institute also recently announced a partnership with the University of Phoenix to develop the next generation of highly educated and competitive manufacturing workers. Through this program, the groups will offer 20 full-tuition scholarships for undergraduate and graduate degrees.

If you're a manufacturer, are you taking any steps in your company to address this need? We'd love to hear your comments.

The Bank of Canada promotes its new plastic currency as being durable, secure and innovative -- but just how durable are they?

CTV News in Winnipeg claims the currency -- specifically the new $100 bills -- are not as durable as old-fashioned paper money.

The report cites Charles Shepard of Brandon, Manitoba, who noticed that when the bills are folded, they can develop cracks that can turn into rips.

Shepard ... put a full can of Coke on top of a new $100 bill.

When he pulled on it, he said the plastic bill ripped in half.

"It's similar to thin tin foil or plastic food wrap. "You pull on it but as soon as it's got a mark or tear on it, it just peels apart," he said.

I'd like to think a $100 note can stand up to a can of Coke. And the next time I find myself with a wallet full of hundreds, you can be sure I'll give it a try.