Judging by the growing number of stories I see on the topic, hard-to-open plastic packaging is a pet peeve of a lot of people -- or at least a lot of newspaper columnists.

The folks at Consumer Reports magazine don't just complain about this problem -- in their own unique style, they study and test a variety of packaging, and come up with a list of the hardest-to-open. Then they tout them with their "Oyster Awards," touted as a "hard-to-open packaging hall of shame."

The 2007 "winners" are featured in the magazine's March issue: the Oral-B Sonic Complete Toothbrush Kit and Bratz Sisterz dolls.

“Consumers are increasingly frustrated with difficult-to-open packaging,” said Tod Marks, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. “As manufacturers create packaging that more aggressively discourages theft and tampering they are concurrently creating a package opening nightmare for many consumers.”

According to the judges, the Oral-B package took CR testers three minutes and fifteen seconds to open. "It takes top honors because of the tools, strength, time, and finesse required to extract the contents. The toothbrush is housed in a sealed, hard-plastic clamshell package and has such a tight fit between the plastic skin and cardboard that it was all but impossible to open with scissors. When the tester finally succeeded in opening the packaging her work table was littered with sharp plastic shards."

The Bratz dolls packaging was loaded with those annoying restraints that hold all the pieces in place -- about 50, according to the magazine.

CR’s 7-year-old tester attempted to open the package and had to resort to ripping the dolls from the package after her safety scissors couldn’t handle the job. The Sisterz were missing clumps of hair and packaging debris was everywhere by the time she finally got the package open.

The magazine also touts some products with better packaging that "put consumer interests first:" the Logitech mouse, Arnold croutons, Zicam Cold and Flu Single Dose, Oral-B Cross Action toothbrush, and the Polly Pocket Trendy Pets Paw Spa. So hats off to them -- and to the losers, it's time to change your packaging.

Here is an interesting story about a pretty exotic application for plastics.

It's from ABC News, and it's about using polymer nanospheres to deliver chemotherapy drugs more effectively, while easing the suffering of patients.

According to Dr. Martina Stenzel, a polymer scientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, the body naturally attacks the toxins in anticancer drugs, so patients receiving chemotherapy treatments have to get numerous IV injections to keep the drugs at an effective concentration.

By putting the drugs in nanospheres, doctors might be able to inject patients just once a week, and the spheres would slowly release the drug precisely where it is needed. Stenzel is with the university's Center for Advanced Macromolecular Design.

This story is further proof that the uses for plastics are incredibly diverse, and new applications are still coming.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, has announced its 2007 inductees, and a few of them have plastics connections.

The most plastics-specific this year is Otto Wichterle (1913-1998), inventor of the soft contact lens. According to the museum's news release, "Wichterle's soft contact lens proved to be less expensive and more comfortable than traditional glass or hard plastic lenses. A significant part of his invention was the process for making the lenses."

A couple of other winners with plastics angles are Allen Breed (1927-1999), inventor of the automotive air bag, and Peter Goldmark (1906-1977), who developed the long-playing record. (OK, who still has an LP collection?)

This year's class has a total of 16 new members. The criteria: winners must hold a U.S. patent, and their invention must have "contributed to the welfare of society and have promoted the progress of science and the useful arts."

The hall of fame was founded in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Association, and its permanent home is in Akron, Ohio.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a story today about a proposal to broaden the state's beverage bottle fee to include a much wider variety of containers: As the story says, "plastic containers that hold everything from nuts and potato chips to drinks and barbecue sauce."

The issue centers on a proposal by the state Ocean Protection Council aimed at the state's marine debris problem. If you haven't noticed, California is taking this issue very seriously, and plastics have attracted a lot of attention. Some cities have banned polystyrene food service products, for example, and regulations related to T-shirt bags, both locally and statewide, have been the subject of frequent headlines.

“Marine debris is one of the worst problems our oceans face,” said Mike Chrisman, the state's resources secretary and chairman of the Ocean Protection Council.

The story quotes Tim Shestek, a Sacramento lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council, saying that putting a fee on plastic products will cause people to switch to other packaging materials that could just as likely end up on beaches.

“We need to look at how to reduce overall litter,” Shestek said.

A story that we posted on our Web site yesterday about Alfred Teo Sr. is quickly shooting up to the top of our "most forwarded" stories list.

The story: Teo was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in prison, plus a $1 million fine, for securities fraud and insider trading. He had pleaded guilty to the charges in June.

Teo is very well known in the plastics industry (although the charges did not involve his company, film extruder Sigma Plastics Group). No doubt a lot of competitors, suppliers and customers are keeping a close eye on the case. But the impact on the plastics side seems minimal: Sigma has had plenty of time to prepare for the transition.

Watch for our updated story on the sentencing later this week. We'll give more details on plastics industry reaction to the news, including comments from processors who wrote letters to the court on Teo's behalf. In the meantime, here's a story from the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger (headline: "Self-made millionaire gets prison") that makes for interesting reading.

TV news people have a tough job. They have to boil down complicated topics into just a few minutes, and try to couple it with interesting visuals, too. TV reporters frequently are thrown into a lot of stories every day, and they're expected to be experts on a ton of topics. It's not easy. So when they do their job well, they deserve applause.

That said, this story from CBS Channel 4 in Miami is poorly done. Like a lot of TV coverage of environmental issues , it's too simplistic, too one-sided, and unnecessarily alarmist.

The story is headlined "Poison Plastic?" on the station's Web site, and it looks like it's largely the result of some video featuring cartoon character Sam Suds that the station got from the Centers for Health and Environmental Justice, a group that opposes PVC. It also quotes Patty Kodish, who the story describes as an international health advocate who is starting a Florida environmental coalition.

The biggest problems with the story are the lack of context and overgeneralizations about PVC. The story also needs a stronger response from someone who can speak with more authority on PVC's record, although in this case I think the "other side" of the story probably would have been buried. How can an industry expert talking about science compete with a talking cartoon duck?

The latest plastics recycling report is out, and for a change it looks like pretty good news. But there's a potential problem with the data that we'll get to in a second.

First, the good news. The number of pounds of plastic bottles in the United States continues to grow, topping 2.1 billion pounds. (This data is for 2005, the latest available). But what's more important is the recycling rate: 24.3 percent of plastic bottles were recycled, up from 22.6 percent in 2004.

Here are a few highlights:

• High density polyethylene bottles: 921.9 million pounds recycled, 27.1 percent recycling rate.
• PET bottles: 1.17 billion pounds recycled, 23.1 percent recycling rate.
• Polypropylene bottles: 10.1 million pounds recycled, 5.5 percent recycling rate (up from 6 million pounds, and 3.2 percent rate, in 2004).

There's one really significant caveat in this report: The hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005 might have inflated the recycling rate.

It's a simple math problem, really. Calculating the recycling rate means dividing the number of pounds of plastic collected and recycled by the volume of virgin resin used to make bottles. In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shut down HDPE resin plants and damaged rail lines needed to ship virgin plastic.

"Blow molding companies responded by drawing down inventories and making up domestic resin shortfalls with imported HDPE material," which the report doesn't include. "As a result, the actual pounds used for HPDE bottle production in 2005 may be somewhat higher than reported.... Rather than guess about the quantitative impact of the above events, the data were left as reported by industry sources."

So let the debate begin: did plastics recycling really gain ground in 2005, or was this a statistical aberration caused by the hurricanes?

The recycling report is conducted by engineering firm R.W. Beck Inc. for the American Chemistry Council's Plastics Division and the Association of Postconsumer Plastics Recyclers.

Well, this story isn't about people who live in plastic greenhouses. But it's still pretty cool.

According to Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Dayton, something called high tunnels are catching on with farmers interested in extending their growing seasons and increasing production. High tunnels look like greenhouses, but they're just simple wood or aluminum frames covered with plastic. They aren't heated; the sun provides all the warmth they need. They're fairly inexpensive, with an average structure costing about $4,000.

In Ohio, the tunnels can extend the growing season by up to four months, according to the article.

The tunnels are catching on outside Ohio, too. A tunnel-farming workship in November that was sponsored by the university attracted farmers from five states.

Mike Nichols in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wins a prize for discovering the best unusual application for plastics yet this year: detaining a suspected vandal.

Nichols' Feb. 3 column tells the story of Kevin Nelson and Ray Severson, a couple of guys at T&R Wood Products in West Bend, Wis., who didn't know what to do with a 19-year-old suspect they caught puncturing a truck tire in the company parking lot.

I suppose you could sit on him, but that's a lot of work and kind of weird. And anyway, said Nelson, the guy smelled like he'd been drinking.

There is no way Jack Bauer would lower himself to simply sitting on some guy who had been drinking.

Clearly, the guy needed to be restrained somehow, though. And, unlike Jack, they did not have a weapon or a cord from a lamp or a telephone or something that they could just yank out of the wall.

Wire? No.

And it was then, said Nelson, "the light bulb went on." Shrink wrap!

T&R makes displays for stores, and uses the stuff to both protect veneers and keep finished products from sliding around and getting damaged on pallets.

"So," said Nelson, "that's when we brought him in the building and shrink-wrapped him."

T&R workers wrapped up the suspect on a pallet, which held him pretty securely until police arrived.

"This is just fantastic to have our suspects immobilized and ready to go," said an appreciative police captain, Toby Netko.

I have a fondness for stories about plastics processors that make unusual products, so here's one I'll share from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise in Saranac Lake, N.Y.

The story is how Jarden Plastic Solutions has retooled its Tupper Lake, N.Y., plant to mold hundreds of varieties of poker chips. The move is the result of parent company Jarden Corp.'s purchase of a Las Vegas-based poker chip company.

“We moved it in with little fanfare,” plant manager Mark Yamrick told the newspaper. “There is a certain amount of security involved.”

Before you get any ideas about pretending to be George Clooney and breaking in to Jarden's plant, note this: the chips aren't actually ready for the gaming tables when they leave Tupper Lake. "Casinos add their own distinctive mark on each chip before it is cash redeemable," according to the report.

Jarden spent $350,000 to handle the work, and set aside about 4,000 square feet of the 130,000-square-foot plant for poker chip production. It also added about 21 workers.

The Bloomberg news wire has an interesting feature today on Pirate Capital LLC, a Norwalk, Conn.-based private equity firm that has won some attention in the plastics industry for its apparently successful effort to make changes at pipe extruder PW Eagle Inc.

The Bloomberg story doesn't mention the PW Eagle saga, but there's plenty of interesting stuff. It tells the tale of Tom Hudson, the renegade Pirate founder who was fired from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and now finds himself with a full-blown mutiny:

Since May 2006, Hudson has battled trading losses and a rebellion within his firm. More than half of his two dozen employees have left, including his most- active analyst, Zachary George.

Pirate is leaking money. Its assets fell to $1.56 billion as of Oct. 31 from a peak of $1.8 billion in August, according to figures Pirate has sent to investors. That figure has since fallen to $1.1 billion. Hudson's Jolly Roger Fund returned 9.5 percent in 2006, trailing a 15.8 percent return for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. It was Pirate's worst year ever.

After his recent moves with PW Eagle, it will be interesting to see if Hudson goes after any more undervalued publicly traded plastics firms.

Here's some ammunition for blow molders trying to win converts to plastic bottles.

The Reading, Pa., Eagle has a story today revealing that when a local school district switched from paperboard to 8-ounce plastic bottles, students drank nearly 13 percent more milk.

Candice E. Hartranft, food service director for the Conrad Weiser School District, told the paper: "It tastes better out of the plastic. When students can see the color, it looks more appealing.”

Hartranft was honored with a 2006 Dairy Excellence Award from the Dairy Councils of Pennsylvania. The award recognizes success in getting children to drink milk.

The San Diego Union-Tribune had some pretty strong criticism for the plumbers' union in a Feb. 1 editorial.

The column, with the headline "Fake greens: From pipes to bayfront, unions strike a pose," took unions to task for standing in the way of wider use of chlorinated PVC pipe. The plumbers' union has long argued that CPVC has health and safety issues, but the paper called the tactic using environmental laws "to extort business concessions."

This week's unanimous decision by the state Building Standards Commission to finally allow California to join the other 49 states in using plastic water pipes in homes was initially depicted by some as a victory for the plastics industry. It is more properly seen as a huge win for consumers and common sense. Forcing builders to use copper pipe – the state's previous policy – added sharply to housing costs. Plastic pipe is not only cheap and durable; it's particularly appropriate for California. Acidic soil and water in fast-growing inland areas corrode copper pipe.

How could it take a quarter-century for the state government to accept the obvious case for plastic pipe? After one wades through all the smoke-screen arguments about plastic pipes' purported environmental destructiveness, the answer is plain: because of the political influence of unions. The plumbers union sees long-lasting, easy-to-replace plastic pipe as a threat to its livelihood. When it sounded the alarm, other unions lined up in support, followed by the Democrats in the Legislature who put unions' interest ahead of the public interest without a second thought.

It's interesting to see CPVC finally win in California, at the same time that plastic bag makers and polystyrene foam foodservice suppliers seem to be fighting for their lives there.

Some big names in global manufacturing are changing hands -- something that's happening so much lately that it seems almost commonplace.

Our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business has a report on its Web site today updating progress on the sale of automotive supplier Delphi Corp. The story notes that Delphi is continuing to talk with a group of private-equity funds about a bankruptcy buyout plan, even though a deadline for the offer expired yesterday.

Delphi, which had filed for protection from creditors in 2005, has a pending $3.4 billion offer from a group of investors that includes Appaloosa Management LP, Cerberus Capital Management LP, Harbinger Capital Partners Master Fund I, Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS Securities LLC.

Delphi is No. 2 in our ranking of North American injection molders.

Meanwhile, Techtronic Industries Co. has finalized its $107 million purchase of Whirlpool Corp.'s Hoover floor care business. According to Crain's Cleveland Business, Techtronic is combining Hoover with its existing Dirt Devil and Royal operations in Glenwillow, Ohio, to create TTI Floor Care, North America, billed as the largest floor care business in this continent.

Chris Gurreri, 41, was named president of TTI Floor Care. He had been president of Techtronic’s Royal Appliance Manufacturing Co. subsidiary.

Gurreri told Crain's Cleveland that the company already has begun drawing up plans for a R&D center in Glenwillow that will house design and engineering employees. It plans to add 110 jobs at the center during the next three years.

“We’re recruiting people already,” he said. The Hoover brand has suffered in the last few years, he said, under owners that openly shopped the business.

What about the future of Hoover's injection molding operations, including its big North Canton, Ohio, plant? It's too early to say. TTI Floor Care said it will “assess all operations of Dirt Devil and Hoover, beginning immediately, to determine its specific manufacturing and distribution strategies.”

The Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal came out in favor of changes to the state's container recycling law in a Feb. 17 editorial.

The column acknowledges changes in the packaging market since the state's bottle bill was passed in 1971 -- which happened to be the nation's first.

Far-seeing though they were, lawmakers of the '70s neglected to require a deposit for wine bottles and juice bottles, among others. What's more, those legislators never could have imagined the way plastic containers would take over our lives.

We swig green tea, iced tea, milk, fruit juice, sports drinks and protein shakes from plastic bottles. Above all, we chug plain old water -- stuff we got free from a tap back in the '70s -- enough to send 34 bottles to dumps yearly for every Oregonian.

A use-it, toss-it mentality seems to have grown alongside this plastic revolution. Oregonians recycle only about one-fourth of our rigid plastic containers, down from about 30 percent in 1995. Bottles are clogging our landfills; they're going up in smoke at the Brooks trash burner. We're degrading our home for a little convenience.

The editorial barely touches on the current dispute over whether the state's recycling rate is really under 25 percent. The bigger question, it seems, is why aren't Oregonians setting the pace in recycling anymore.

An Associated Press wire story about vinyl lunch boxes with unsafe levels of lead was picked up this weekend by a lot of news Web sites.

The story is critical of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which tested 60 soft vinyl lunch boxes and found that one in five had levels of lead that experts considered unsafe.

But instead of warning consumers, CPSC said it had found "no instances of hazardous levels." CPSC's position is that the lunch boxes are safe because kids don't get much "direct exposure" to lead from the lunch boxes.

Based on the extremely low levels of lead found in our tests, in most cases, children would have to rub their lunch box and then lick their hands more than 600 times every day, for about 15-30 days, in order for the lunch box to present a health hazard.

But the Food and Drug Administration, after reviewing CPSC's data, sent a letter to lunch box manufacturers warning them that their lead levels might be dangerously high.

AP's story quotes Vinyl Institute spokesman Allen Blakey saying the trade group defers to the government agencies on this issue.

The CPSC was pretty clear that they did not see a danger in these lunch boxes. The FDA had a slightly different take on it. But basically, we have not seen any indication of actual harm from the lunch boxes.

It seems like common sense that a product like a child's lunch box shouldn't contain anything close to a hazardous level of lead. But apparently some manufacturers -- and CPSC -- needed a reminder.

Here's a story that's of interest to every plastics component supplier in the automotive market.

Our sister paper, Automotive News, has a story on the Web today that General Motors Corp. is in negotiations to buy Chrysler from its German parent company.

"High-level talks are taking place between DaimlerChrysler AG and GM executives," the story says. "Although the two companies have discussed cooperation on a large SUV, say sources at both companies, the potential deal would go beyond limited product development alliances."

GM spokesman Tony Cervone is quoted declining comment, but adding: "We have always said that conversations (between GM and many other parties) have happened all the time, and many times they don't come to fruition."

A DaimlerChrysler AG spokesman declined comment, and the story adds that some sources have reacted skeptically.

Changes are definitely coming to Chrysler: DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Officer Dieter "Dr. Z" Zetsche said last week that the company was open to all options, including a sale.

If GM buys Chrysler, I'd expect to see the some big changes, relatively quickly, in the companies' supply chains.

Mike Verespej, our staff reporter in Washington, has captured a bit of drama with his story on U.S. trade representative Susan Schwab's visit to Congress yesterday.

Verespej writes: "If the chilly reception that U.S trade representative Susan Schwab received at hearings in the House and Senate on trade policy is any indication, the battle to get presidential authority to negotiate free trade agreements renewed when it expires June 30 will be a contentious one."

The story illustrates the split in the business community over trade, too. The Bush administration and manufacturers (including the plastics industry) officially are behind an effort to renew the fast-track authority under which international free trade agreements are subject to an up-or-down vote, but not amendment, in Congress. But plenty of small manufacturers are joining labor groups in arguing that they have suffered as a result of previous trade deals.

“We need to see that you care more about the American people, and that you are not just helping American multi-nationals who operate worldwide get good deals,” Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.—the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee — told Schwab at a Senate Finance Committee hearing Feb. 15.

The Senate Finance Committee chairman continuously interrupted Schwab and took every opportunity to scold her and the U.S. trade team whenever she attempted to defend the administration’s effort on trade enforcement, discuss how it has worked with Congress on FTAs or explain how FTAs had improved labor conditions in the countries where they have been enacted and benefited U.S. workers.

Do you expect fast-track authority to be renewed? If it doesn't, what will it mean to U.S.-based businesses ability to compete globally?

Huntsman Corp. is never the same company for long -- the firm has a long history of changing its product mix, buying and selling assets to take advantage of the cyclical chemical industry. The fact that Huntsman was privately owned gave it the ability to change quickly and take advantage of bargains as other companies looked to sell out-of-favor assets -- and then sell them when the price was right.

Well, Huntsman isn't a private company anymore -- it did an initial public offering in 2005. But the Salt Lake City-based company continues to change with the times. Today, the firm announced that it is selling its U.S. Base Chemicals and Polymers business to Flint Hills Resources LLC, a subsidiary of Koch Industries Inc.

Wichita, Kan.-based Flint Hills is paying $456 million, plus the value of inventory on the date of the closing.

The deal includes Huntsman's olefins and polymers manufacturing assets in: Port Arthur, Odessa and Longview, Texas; Peru, Ill.; and Marysville, Mich. The business employs 900.

More changes are in store for the resin sector, as our Feb. 12 Viewpoint (and cartoon) illustrated. The last round of consolidation in the polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene markets caused big changes for processors. How will they need to adapt to the new changes?

The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. and Canon Communications LLC today announced a deal that is important to companies that exhibit at plastics trade shows. Canon is buying the Plastics USA trade show, which will move from Chicago's McCormick Place to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill. SPI and Canon also agreed to cooperate on some other projects and future events.

Canon will have a Plastics USA "feature" at its Sept. 25-27 Plastec Midwest show later this year. The first Plastics USA event to be managed and promoted by Canon is scheduled for Sept. 23-25, 2008.

SPI still has NPE, the largest North American plastics trade show, which is held every three years in Chicago. But Plastics USA has been less successful, and SPI was right not to continue doing the show. It's better to focus attention on projects with more promise.

It will be interesting to see what sort of long-term changes this deal signals to the plastics trade show market, and how it might affect the timing of all the major global shows (Plastics USA and the K show in Germany have tended to be too close together for some people to exhibit at or attend both).

It's rare to see a funny line in a story about the U.S. trade deficit (which climbed to a record high for the fifth straight year, the Commerce Department reported yesterday). So congratulations to Alan Tonelson, who was quoted with this zinger in the Washington Post today:

"If President Bush deserves blank-check trade negotiating authority from Congress with this record, then Paris Hilton deserves to be Girl Scout of the Year."

Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, wrote a perspective column that Plastics News published a few weeks ago, "U.S. losing ground, even in U.S." Both his column, and the Post story, are worth a read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the trade issue.

Washington seems to be filled with free trade advocates, but the split between Congress and the White House probably puts trade issues on the back burner, at least until after the election. But it's likely that we'll see continued pressure on China to revalue its currency.

Anheuser-Busch Cos. and the Daytona International Speedway have come up with a plan to encourage fans at the Daytona 500 to recycle plastic and aluminum containers.

Basically, campers who enter the infield and a campground at the Speedway will get plastic recycling bags. When the bags are full, campers can turn them in for Dale Earnhardt Jr. posters and other race merchandise.

Even if adults won't bother, I bet kids at the race will recycle containers to exchange for some free race stuff. This looks like an idea worth emulating at other special events.

Here's one shared by our senior staff reporter Frank Esposito, who is enjoying the beginning of a second week of sub-freezing temperatures in Akron, Ohio.

Frank points out that the wind-chill formula, "the weatherman's favorite alarmist statistic," has a plastics angle! More than 60 years ago, Antarctic explorers Paul Siple and Charles Passel left plastic bottles of water outside in the wind and observed the rate at which they froze. Their equation used wind speed and air temperature to describe the rate at which the bottles gave off heat, expressed in watts per square meter.

These days meteorologists use more complex formulas that, they believe, more accurately measure how wind speed and temperature feel to human skin.

Still, the lead story on Slate.com today explores the "gaudy negative numbers" that result from calculating wind chills, and suggests that we stop trying to perfect the equation.

The old system might have overstated the numbers when it said that 5 degrees could feel like minus 40. But after three decades of practice, we all got pretty good at translating from the outrageous numbers in the weather reports to our own experience. When the weather service recalibrated the system in 2001, we had to start all over and rebuild our frame of reference from scratch.

Rather than trying to patch up wind chill's inconsistencies, we should just dump it altogether. The best algorithm we'll ever have for determining how cold it feels comes from our own experience.

I'm ready to chuck the equation, and the experience factor too, and spend the next couple of months in Florida. Can I get someone to shovel my sidewalk when I'm gone?

This story from the Keokuk, Iowa, Daily Gate City surprised me, not because of the news that the plant had closed, but because it had managed to stay in business for so long.

Last week, equipment from the former Sheaffer Pen Co. plant in Fort Madison, Iowa, was auctioned. The plant, on the Mississippi River, made fountain pens, and the equipment included injection molding presses.

Sheaffer is a unit of Clichy, France-based Société Bic, the lighter, pen and razor giant. Bic had planned to close the plant three years ago, but it managed to stay open until a few months ago. According to the story, the company's history in Fort Madison dates back to 1912, when Walter Sheaffer, who had patented the refillable fountain pen in 1908, opened a small plant with seven employees in the back room of a jewely store.

I know some people still use fountain pens -- I've seen some beautiful ones in jewelry stores. But I don't know anyone who uses one on a regular basis. So hats off to the former Sheaffer workers, as we, unfortunately, note the end of a chapter in U.S. manufacturing.

The biggest headline in the manufacturing world today is Toyota Motor Co.'s announcement that it will build its eighth North American vehicle assembly plant on a 1,700-acre site in Blue Springs, Miss., near Tupelo.

The plant will employ 2,000, and will build the Highlander sport utility vehicle. According to the company's news release, the plant will have capacity to make 150,000 vehicles annually, and will start production in 2010. Plastics molding will be part of the operations.

Tupelo will join these Toyota plants in North America:

• Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky Inc. in Georgetown, Ky., which produces the Avalon, Camry, Camry Hybrid, and Camry Solara.

• Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc. in Cambridge, Ontario, which produces the Corolla, Matrix and Lexus RX 350.

• Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana Inc. in Princeton, Ind., which produces the Tundra, Sequoia, and Sienna.

• New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), a joint venture with General Motors in Fremont, Calif., that produces the Corolla and Tacoma and Pontiac Vibe.

• Toyota Motor Manufacturing de Baja California in Tijuana, Mexico, which produces the Tacoma and Tacoma truck beds.

• Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas Inc. in San Antonio, Texas, which produces the Tundra.

• And, beginning in 2008, a new plant in Woodstock, Ontario that will produce the RAV4.
  

Green building is a huge trend, one that manufacturers of vinyl building products have been watching closely.

Today they got some important good news, when the Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee of the U.S. Green Building Council today issued its final report on the technical and scientific basis for a PVC-related credit within the LEED Green Building Rating System.

Basically, the committee reaffirmed its earlier draft report, which said PVC should not be the subject of a negative credit. This doesn't end the debate -- the next step is continued review, this time involving USGBC's own board of directors. But the fact that the committee decided not to give PVC a black eye is a big win for the vinyl industry. A negative credit for vinyl probably would mean some designers would steer clear of the material.

A news release from the USGBC quotes Malcolm Lewis, the committee chairman, saying that "a simple yes or no" on PVC was not adequate, and "a more nuanced answer which points the way to dealing with some larger issues was essential.”

The Arlington, Va.-based Vinyl Institute issued a news release quoting Tim Burns, its president. "This is the right decision," Burns said. "The report of the committee was correct in stating that there are no simple 'yes' or 'no' answers to assessing the desirability of different building materials."

The U.K. tabloid Sunday Express reported yesterday that Dow Chemical Co. is about to get a takeover bid from a consortium of private equity firms.

The big question: is there any substance to the report? MarketWatch's report on the story points out that the Express is "a publication not well-known for its mergers-and-acquisition coverage," and it did not identifiy the source of the information.

The report says the buyout group may include Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group, and that they plan to break up Midland, Mich.-based Dow into smaller companies.

Dow's shares shot up $3.47, to $46.92, on the news. I'm not sure I'd mortgage the farm on this one.

The Cincinnati Enquirer today has a fun Q&A interview with Samuel L. Belcher, a member of the Plastics Hall of Fame famous for developing some iconic plastic packages, like the McDonald's foam breakfast container.

The column does, unfortunately, incorporate my "The Graduate" pet peeve angle, but with a twist. The reporter asks Belcher, "Is Benjamin Braddock the kind of guy you'd have hung with in 1967?"

Belcher has obviously seen the movie: "No. He really didn't have a goal nor really knew what he wanted to do in life."

I won't spoil all the fun here, but some of the paper's other questions are: "If you could take one plastic product to a desert island, what would it be?" "You're a plastics expert: What's with those people who wear plastic clogs?" and "The Society of Plastics Engineers will hold its national convention at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati this April. What do plastics engineers do for fun when they get together?"

Belcher was a good sport about all the silly questions. To learn more about this plastics industry pioneer (he was Rubbermaid Co.'s first staff plastics engineer), check out PN senior reporter Bill Bregar's profile of Belcher when he entered the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2003.

Buffalo News business reporter Michelle Kearns wrote a feature today on plastics recycling, highlighting the experience of a local cider and water company that is selling plastic scrap that it previously had to pay to send to the landfill.

The company is making $36,000 to $76,000 annually by recycling its waste strapping, pallet wrap and other materials. But, perhaps just as important, the company owners feel like they're helping the environment while they also boost the company's bottom line.

Most people think of themselves as environmentalists these days -- and the market for recycled plastic is healthy enough that we're beginning to see some investment in new capacity.

"As we've all aged - my brother, my father and I - we've all become more environmentally friendly," said Garrett Mayer, vice president of Mayer Bros., the drink company. Later in the story he said there is something about recycling, whether or not it saves money, that just feels good. "I think people, in general, want to do the right thing," he said.

Kearns talked to me for this story, and I'm pleased to say that she did a good job explaining the current state of the scrap recycling sector (and she quoted me accurately, too, which is a plus).

Most plastics companies have programs in place for recycling their scrap, so this is a story that others could pitch to their own local news media.

Mary Scheibel, principal owner of Milwaukee-based marketing communications firm Scheibel Halaska Inc., has a new blog on the Milwaukee Small Business Times Web site.

The first post is headlined "Pssst! Manufacturing is alive and well," and it features some nice words of encouragement for a sector of the economy that needs a bit of cheerleading these days.

Lean manufacturing. Highly engineered design. Automation. Rapid prototyping. Global supply chain partnerships. Headline-worthy progress is in full swing at manufacturing facilities everywhere, but we aren't reading about it enough. News coverage spotlights a success here and there, but it too often on focuses on negative generalizations.

This gloomy vision of the future is scaring away the next generation of manufacturing leaders - talented people whom resurgent manufacturers need to keep up with growth.

Scheibel, who has been quoted in Plastics News, too, urges young people looking for a career to consider manufacturing, pointing out that the best companies in the sector are profitable and offer a promising future -- but need a new generation of leaders.

Keep it up, Mary, and welcome to blogland!

Andrew Leonard's "How the world works" blog at Salon.com yesterday tackled the confusing world of PET recycling. The market has suffered through years of sluggish recycling rates despite healthy demand and fairly high prices for scrap material.

I'm not sure how many people outside the plastics industry will be able to make sense of the column -- it's second nature to me, but I've been writing about this issue for 16 years. But Leonard does a pretty good job of putting all the pieces of the story into perspective.

Most important, he seems to have reached the correct conclusion: curbside recycling isn't keeping up with the growing volume of PET bottles, which are being thrown away by the ton. Plastics News has urged the industry to support container deposit programs. Some PET blow molders know deposits are in their best interest, but their hands are tied -- they can't really lobby for deposits because their customers, the grocery chains and drink manufacturers, are opposed.

The Reuters news service has a short item on the wire today quoting BASF AG Chief Executive Officer Juergen Hambrecht on his company's interest in buying GE Plastics.

"I think the price of the [GE Plastics] assets is not within the general target corridor of BASF," Hambrecht said at a news conference, according to the report.

This isn't a surprise. We reported a month ago that industry observers don't expect BASF to be interested in buying all of Pittsfield, Mass.-based GE Plastics. No word on whether BASF might be interested in some parts of the company, if some selected assets became available.

It looks like the big changes that toy company Lego A/S has made in the last few years are working out -- big time.

The company announced Feb. 21 that its 2006 net profit rose to 1.43 billion Danish kroner ($251.7 million), up from 505 million kroner in 2005.

Lego, which is based in Billund, Denmark, lost money in 2004, and toy industry analysts wondered about the company's ability to attract the attention of today's video game generation.

The company decided to outsource most of its injection molding work to Flextronics International Ltd., which shifted manufacturing to lower-cost plants. Lego slashed employment at operations in Billund; Willisau, Switzerland, and Enfield, Conn.

"The year 2006 was a particularly satisfactory year. It shows that Lego products are full of life, and that our strategy of concentrating on our core business is correct," Lego Managing Director Jørgen Vig Knudstorp told reporters. He added in the news release: "Despite the announcement in 2006 of the outsourcing of most of the production, the employees delivered a great and impressive effort, even though the pressure on the employees has without doubt been very heavy."

The turnaround at Lego is notable, and the prescription for success -- outsourcing captive molding work to custom molders -- is one that other OEMs might emulate.

Toledo, Ohio-based building products firm Owens Corning, in its fourth quarter earnings report released today, announced that it is looking for a buyer for its vinyl siding business.

The company said it will "explore strategic alternatives" -- that's the code word for "it's for sale" these days -- for its Siding Solutions business, which includes its vinyl siding manufacturing plants and its Norandex/Reynolds distribution business, plus its Fabwel unit.

Fabwel makes components and sidewalls for recreational vehicles and cargo trailers.

Owens Corning ranks No. 14 in our survey of North American profile, pipe and tubing extruders, with estimated sales of $320 million -- all in profiles.

The construction beat has definitely been a little more exciting than usual the past few years, with big deals involving J-M Manufacturing Co. Inc., Royal Group Technologies Ltd. and others. Will a competitor buy Owens Corning's siding business, or will we more likely see a financial buyer?

The Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting today that Milacron Inc. this morning announced two-week furloughs and temporary pay cuts for most of the 950 employees at its plants in Batavia and Mount Orab, Ohio.

The paper quotes spokesman Al Beaupre: “The purpose is to save people and jobs. Our injection molding business in North America has been negatively affected by higher oil and resin prices and the problems within the automotive supplier network.’’

According to the report, about 800 employees within the injection molding business will be on two-week furloughs without pay in a staggered schedule over the next 16 weeks. Workers who make extruders and blow molding equipment are not included in the temporary cuts.

In an apparently unrelated move, earlier this week Milacron announced that Karlheinz Bourdon, a 15-year veteran of Milacron Inc. who was replaced as president of global plastics machinery late last year, is leaving the company to pursue other interests. Also, Milacron will announce its fourth-quarter and year-end results on Friday.

Ikea retail stores are joining the effort to reduce plastic bag use. The company announced today that, starting March 15, it no longer will offer customers free plastic bags. Regular bags will cost 5 cents, and Ikea's large reusable blue bags will cost 59 cents. Proceeds will go to American Forests, a conservation organization.

The Conshohocken, Pa.-based U.S retailer, which is owned by Swedish company Inter Ikea Systems BV, said its goal is to completely eliminate plastic bag use in all of its stores.

Ikea projects that the number of plastic bags used by their U.S. customers will be reduced by at least 50 percent from 70 million to 35 million in the first year. This program was launched in IKEA stores in the [United Kingdom] in late Spring 2006, and reduction has been a monumental 95 percent. Also, blue bag purchases were increased, since IKEA encouraged usage for a multitude of purposes.

Paying for plastic bags definitely will cut their use. I was at a grocery store yesterday that charges a nickel per bag, and it's amazing how creative consumers can be to save a bit of money.