Folks in New London, Conn., are debating whether a urethane foam blob, painted orange and appearing to flow down the front of a downtown building, is art.

Check out the photo on the link above. You'll see why Barry Neistat, owner of the Muddy Waters Cafe next door told the New London The Day newspaper, "It looks like King Kong climbed the building and threw up."

The comments section of the story has some other terrific descriptions: Creamsicle melting, toxic sludge, and many more. The paper even started a "What should we call that Blob on Bank Street?" contest.

I think the blob is pretty impressive looking, and it certainly seems to have people talking. From time-to-time artists and their agents contact Plastics News with pitches for stories about their work in plastics media. A lot of the stuff is interesting, but typically not the kind of thing we write about. But I'm happy to include the blob in our blog today, and to thank Frank Antosiewicz, our correspondent in South Hadley, Mass., who alerted me to the story.

The financial media this week is covering the settlement of the lawsuits between Dow Chemical Co. and two former executives, Romeo Kreinberg and J. Pedro Reinhard. One of the more interesting stories I've seen the past few days is in today's The New York Times business section, titled "Secret Life of a Deal."

The story looks at court documents and pieces together the timeline and players of "Project Achilles," the name the pair gave to their secret plan to try to take over Midland, Mich.-based Dow.

The story notes that "the case and its juicy depositions weren't just about two rogue employees. It pulled the curtain back on a netherworld of deal makers on various continents who had become wrapped up in this plot."

Some juicy tidbits from the story:

• If they had been successful, the pair would have ousted Dow CEO Andrew Liveris and made Kreinberg CEO and Reinhard chairman.
• The would-be takeover team tried to get Len Blavatnik, owner of Basell Polyolefins, to participate in the deal.
• Reinhard sought $5 million from the Sultanate of Oman to resign from Dow and work on the buyout.
• JPMorgan executives met with Kreinberg and Reinhard in secret at a hotel outside London, the Compleat Angler. The group had "hired entire hotel for confidentiality." Looks like a nice place. Let's hope they tipped well and made it worthwhile for the staff.

Most interesting to me is this question: What did the mutineers get for settling the case?

The answer isn't clear.

The Times reported that Dow paid the men "a substantial sum." But the Wall Street Journal quoted a company spokesman saying that Dow had "secured some of what it had sought in the lawsuit it filed last spring, including reducing the amount of equity compensation the men received during their employment at Dow. The spokesman also said Dow is not paying any damages that Kreinberg and Reinhard sought in defamation suits they filed against Dow last year."

But the WSJ report also quotes Reinhard's lawyer, Gary Naftalis, saying his client is "very satisfied with the financial aspects of the settlement."

Given the millions he hoped to pocket from this deal, I don't think Reinhard would be "very satisfied" with nothing.

I'm sure the numbers will come out eventually. If we've learned anything from this escapade, we know that eventually someone will talk.

Reuters has a scary typo in a news story today ... they say the price of high density polyethylene has hit $100 per pound.

The story is about rising resin prices, which is a topic readers here understand all too well.

You know that flimsy plastic bag the convenience store clerk put your toothpaste in?

The price of those bags, though still cheaper than paper ones, is rising fast because of higher natural gas and oil prices. And the same goes for plastic water bottles, takeout containers, the case around your computer, and car parts.

Let's start with that flyaway plastic bag -- which has gotten flimsier as packaging makers of all stripes cut costs.

That bag is made from high density polyethylene, which cost a little over $70 per pound in early 2007 and now costs $100, according to figures supplied by Integrated Design Engineering Systems (IDES), which follows the plastics industry.

"I think it's pretty safe to say it's the highest ever. I think you'll see some fluctuations but long term I don't think it can go down," IDES President Mike Kmetz said.

It's obviously a typo that detracts from an otherwise interesting story that explains to the general public the kind of pricing pressures that processors, and their customers, are experiencing.

Let's just hope it's not predictive of the future.

Here's another interesting snippet from the story:

Susan Selke of Michigan State University's School of Packaging said she expected more changes in packaging to use less plastic, and also more plastic made from sugar cane and other renewable resources, rather than natural gas and oil.

"Energy prices are going up dramatically and that means that everything costs more," she added. "I don't see that affecting the competitiveness of plastic in the marketplace."

Add the University of Wisconsin's Stout campus to the short list of U.S. colleges and universities that offer a bachelor of science program in plastics engineering. The Menomonie, Wis.-based school announced the news on Friday.

The new degree program will start this fall. UW-Stout officials expects to have 100 students in the program after five years. Currently there are no other polymer/plastics engineering programs in Wisconsin.

UW-Stout already offers a bachelor of science degree in engineering technology with a concentration in plastics. According to a news release from the university, Wisconsin employers have had to recruit from universities in other states for plastics engineers.

"This will serve a very large plastics industry in Wisconsin," UW-Stout Chancellor Charles W. Sorensen said.

The release also quotes Jon Spaeth, an engineering manager with Phillips Plastics Corp., said in a letter to the state's Board of Regents that his company “is continually looking for and developing new engineering talent.”

“Phillips has and continues to hire UW-Stout graduates for our engineering level positions,” Spaeth wrote. “We have always been pleased with the caliber of the individuals from UW-Stout and believe that the additional degree will place the graduate one step further ahead.”

The plastics engineering degree program will use the same core classes as the current manufacturing engineering program, but will require eight additional course, covering material selection and testing; various processes including injection molding, extrusion, thermoforming, blow molding and rotational molding; and the design of tooling and machinery.

Congratulations and best of luck to UW-Stout. How do the plastics engineers out there feel about this? Which school do you think has the best program, and how's the outlook for plastics engineering graduates this year?

Here's an odd story: the city of Los Angeles has intentionally dumped thousands of black plastic balls in a local reservoir in order to protect the water supply.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dumped 400,000 hollow-4-inch "Shade Balls" to cover the surface of the Ivanhoe Reservoir.

David Nahai, CEO and general manager of the utility, said in a news release: "These balls will shade the water's surface, helping to prevent a sunlight-triggered chemical reaction with the treated water, thereby ensuring its safety. Nothing tops water quality on our priority list. We are on the record with this priority and we will stop at nothing to ensure our water is safe."

The Shade Balls will stay on the reservoir for about five years, when a new underground water storage project is complete.

The balls help to minimize the risk of bromate-forming chemical reactions.

An Associated Press story describes the Shade Ball-covered reservoir as resembling "a giant tub of bowling balls or a piece of large-scale conceptual art."

For some cool photos of the Shade Balls being dumped into the reservoir, check out this Los Angeles Times local news blog.

Public relations firms are usually stuck behind the scenes -- often playing an important part in major company news, but rarely getting any credit for their role. So I'll take an opportunity today to highlight a firm that our Plastics News reporters deal with all the time, AH&M Marketing Communications Inc.

The Pittsfield, Mass.-based Berkshire Eagle has this feature story today on AH&M, described as a "global media relations firm" celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The subject of the interview is the firm's boss, Jim Allison, a former GE Plastics spokesman.

Most of the North Street agency's clients are Fortune 500 companies that operate on the cusp of invention and technology — in plastics, chemicals, electronics, construction and health care. But such advancements often are most tantalizing within industry circles and in trade publications that track the latest buzz in carbon fiber, thermoplastics, flexible plastics and chemical advances, which eventually wind up in scores of consumer products, medical equipment, cars and electronics.

The story notes that his clients are heavy on the plastics side, including Sabic Innovative Plastics LP, GLS Corp. (which was recently acquired by PolyOne Corp.), Spartech Corp., and China Array Plastics.

I thought it was interesting that although our reporters talk to Jim and his crew frequently, and we see them at trade shows around the world, neither he nor AH&M show up in a search of our story archives.

Talk about being behind-the-scenes. Today, here's a rare chance for Jim to enjoy the spotlight.

Have you ever been suspicious of a building or office down the street from your factory -- perhaps you wonder if there's some drug dealing or manufacturing in the neighborhood?

Don't assume that everything's OK. Kristen Calis, a reporter for the Durham, Ontario, Metroland Durham Regional Media Group, has a story this week about a small plastics company in Pickering, Ontario, that's seen its business turned upside-down after a crystal meth lab next door exploded in November 2006.

Ramona Williams, owner of Durham Plastics Display Co., relocated shortly after the explosion, but she still estimates that the explosion cost her small business C$845,000.

"I went from being a completely debt-free company to plunging over my head in debt, and soon to lose my house," Williams told the newspaper. Financial papers going back 14 years had to be destroyed. As a result, now she's having a tough time getting bank financing. Williams has turned to the city for help, and the city has turned over the case to its legal department and its insurance company.

Like buying a home, location is critically important when choosing a manufacturing site. But who would imagine a business worrying about a crystal meth lab moving next door?

I've seen an awful lot of headlines today about some comments that FDA made yesterday about the safety of bisphenol A.

In journalism, there's a name for a story about something that isn't really new. We call it a non-story. This BPA story is a non-story.

The big headlines shout that Dr. Norris Alderson, FDA's associate commissioner for science, testified before a U.S. House subcommittee that BPA is safe.

"Although our review is ongoing, there's no reason to recommend consumers stop using products with BPA," Alderson said.

Sound interesting? Not really. This is exactly what FDA has been saying for months, including just after the wave of publicity that saw stores remove polycarbonate baby bottles and water jugs from their shelves.

Since the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee is considering a bill that would outlaw polycarbonate baby bottles, we'll all get a chance to hear opponents and proponents re-state how they feel about BPA safety. So expect more headlines in the coming days as experts testify, and representatives question them and make their own mini-speeches.

Is it newsworthy? Not really. It's certainly not an important new revelation. A colleague said this is an example of daily newspapers and wire services being dumb and lazy, looking for easy stories. Sometimes, I'm sure, they feel the need to write about everything that moves in Washington -- even when the motion is just hot air.

Are vinyl shower curtains "harmless" or "potentially toxic"? If it's a slow news day, expect to see coverage of this question in your local newspaper tomorrow, thanks to the release of a report, "Volatile Vinyl: The New Shower Curtain's Chemical Smell."

The report was released today by the Center for Health, Environment & Justice and the Canadian Environmental Law Association. So it's no surprise that they're coming out against PVC -- CHEJ has a "poison plastic" Web site, and it's long been pushing for politicians, retailers and consumer product companies to ban or phase out PVC.

A news release from CHEJ and CELA claims vinyl shower curtains off-gas toxic chemicals, and it calls on the U.S. and Canada "to take serious action on the use of PVC in consumer products." (The full report is available here.)

The Vinyl Institute was prepared for this report today, and sent out a news release of its own. Here are some excerpts:

Decades of research and use prove that shower curtains made of vinyl are safe, effective and deserve their popularity, the Vinyl Institute said this morning.

The Institute responded to a report released today that attempts to manipulate retailer and public fears over this simple, popular and trusted household item.

The report lists substances in vinyl shower curtains. To a doctor or scientist, the report shows that vinyl shower curtains are not much different from other familiar consumer goods. Even foods can contain some of the chemicals listed in the report.

To a consumer or retailer, however, the report is carefully written to provoke anxiety over whether shower curtains are harmful – without citing any evidence of actual harm.

Greg Bocchi, president of the Vinyl Institute, said, “Shower curtains are not harmful. This report is simple scare-mongering. It is a blatant attempt by a well-known pressure group to manipulate consumers and retailers into thinking that shower curtains pose a danger, when they don’t. It offers no evidence of actual harm.”

It will be interesting to see if -- and how -- the media reports this story. The first news Web site that I've seen pick it up today is the New York Daily News, which covered it with the pithy headline "Shower curtains could mean curtains for you, says watchdog group."

That story doesn't quote VI or its response, but it does include comments from a Consumer Product Safety Commission spokewoman who says "The claims being made about the dangers of shower curtains are phantasmagorical. It's ridiculous"

Plus there's this reaction at the end of the Daily News story:

"If you don't eat the shower curtain, it probably doesn't pose a real risk, but if there's no ventilation you'll be exposed," said Dr. Joel Forman, an associate professor of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"If you have one that's more than a month old, the levels are likely quite low," Forman said. "My year-old one, I'm more worried about the mold."

Careful what chemicals you use to clean that curtain, Dr. Forman. They could be toxic.

Karim Rashid, a celebrity industrial designer whose work has been featured in museums -- and on TV commercials -- has long been a defender of the capabilities and utility of plastics. He sticks his neck out for plastics here in a Q-and-A interview with the Web site Pure Contemporary.

Here's what Rashid, who has been called the "Poet of Plastics," has to say about polymers:

I prefer to design inexpensive, accessible, democratic goods -- so that everyone can have and afford good design. I hate the idea that only an elite gets to have interesting or beautiful things -- sadly most of the elite have bad antiquated tastes anyway. Plastics afford me to do this but I must say for every plastic product that I design that goes to market, I have designed 50 other products in ceramic, glass, metal, and other materials -- so I have not really produced a great deal of plastic products -- only a few that are very successful.

But also let me speak about plastics for a moment. There are many plastics that are 100 percent recyclable and some even biodegradable. Seventy percent of medical components and parts in hospitals are plastic -- there are 20,000 different polymers and the performances and properties, vary immensely. We have plastic hearts, plastic cars, plastic houses, plastic clothes (polyesters, etc.), credit cards, mobile phones, ... -- latex prevents the transmission of sexual decease, contact lenses are plastic, and I could go on and on. There are many plastics that cost much more than glass, or marble, or silver. It is a very simple and backward idea that plastics are 'dangerous' and we want to automatically criticize them without knowing anything about them.

Rashid has been criticized in some circles for his use of plastics in so-called fast-moving consumer goods. But he's taken the shots and stuck by his philosophy, that plastics help designers make high-quality products accessible to the mass market.

Bisphenol A has reached a new level of public awareness -- the funny papers. BPA got a prominent mention in the Cathy comic strip today. The strip features a Father's Day angle -- Cathy's dad is giving her advice:

"...Always lock your doors," he says, "but first check your home's mold levels, radon levels, lead levels, and the mercury content of the fish in your freezer..."

When Cathy's mom offers him a bottle of water, he panics:

"Not if the plastic bottle contains BPA!!"

It's all further proof that BPA is becoming a front-burner issue, at least for the environmentally aware sector of the public. A year ago, I never would have imagined BPA being an issue with enough public recognition that it could be featured in a Sunday comic strip.

Thanks to the alert reader who sent me a link to this one.

A Q&A interview on Brandweek's Web site has some interesting comments from Coca-Cola Co. executives Scott Vitters and John Shero. Among other topics, Vitters covers what Coke thinks about degradable materials and what the company likes about PET.

Brandweek asked Vitters, "Have you ever considered corn-based bottles and the like?" His reply:

We believe bio-based plastic materials offer tremendous long-term promise for enhancing the environmental performance of our packages. Instead of relying on fossil fuels, these innovative materials are produced using the natural sugar or dextrose from commonly grown plants. Coca-Cola has been working for over a decade to responsibly advance plant-based plastics (bio-polymers) technology.

However, as with any new package, including bio-based, we have been very careful to understand the full life cycle of the package and its environmental before making it commercial. There have been three primary environmental factors that have kept us from commercializing a bio-based plastic bottle to date that we are actively working to overcome:

* Package Performance: Current market technologies have had significant performance limitations given their low gas barrier (doesn't hold carbon dioxide long) and low heat stability (can warp in warm temperatures). We are working to overcome these and other performance challenges now.

* Recycling Impact: Because the bio-based plastics look and feel so similar to regular PET [polyethylene terephthalate] plastics, they end up being collected together and contaminating the PET plastic recycling stream -which in turn can cause additional waste. Coca-Cola has been actively working to develop new state of the art recycling processing technologies to effectively separate these two different type of plastics, but today most recyclers do not have such technology in place. This issue is of particular concern to Coca-Cola since we are a key end user of recycled PET plastic back into bottles and will be opening the world's largest bottle to bottle PET plastic recycling plant next year.

* Value of the Use-Package: Life cycle analysis research conducted by Coca-Cola discovered early on that composting a bio-based bottle would be environmentally inferior to a PET plastic bottle (by composting a bottle you lose all the stored energy value). Based on this research, Coca-Cola has been focused on evaluating recycling processes and end-use markets that can be created to cost-effectively sustain the reuse of bio-based polymer bottles. Since these markets do not currently exist, the majority of bio-based packages launched today will simply be treated as waste and thrown into landfills.

We have also worked on other types of bio-based packaging such as cold and hot beverage cups, lids and straws. Since our first pilot of renewable cups at the 2002 Winter Olympics, we have continued to expand our use of bio-based - including making a branded bio-based cup option available for our customers. We have also been actively involved in programs to enhance the availability of community composting programs given that research has shown composting to be an environmentally effective mechanism for managing cup waste.

We have an extensive amount of research in this issue area that we would be happy to share with those interested.

Interesting comments, but nothing really surprising. If Coke can help boost the PET recycling rate, the company should be able to avoid any serious pressure to switch to PLA or some other material.

Malaysia's The Star news Web site has an offbeat story today that I can't pass up. It's about a plastics company that was duped of 2,000 Malaysian Ringgit (about US$613) by a pair of alleged con men.

According to the story, the con started when the pair visited the plastics company on June 4, asking about buying plastic bags. One alleged con man asked the company owner for change for a 50. Then he asked to see how much money the owner had in his wallet.

The next thing you know, the wallet is empty and the poor company owner is explaining the scam to a press conference. Yikes. Talk about embarrassing.

But the icing on the cake is the description of the suspects: Two foreign-looking men, in their 30s, "wearing strong cologne."

So apparently the police are looking for George and Yortuk Festrunk -- Saturday Night Live's "two wild and crazy guys."

Yesterday was the 50th birthday of the Hula Hoop, another classic Wham-O Inc. toy that holds a special place in plastics industry history.

I've seen and heard the story many times, and this version from the Houston Business Journal sums it up pretty well.

The short version: Phillips Petroleum Co. was trying to commercialize high density polyethylene in the 1950s, but its huge new commercial reactor was making way too much off-spec resin. Customers canceled orders, and Phillips had warehouses filled with resin that no one wanted.

Then Wham-O introduced the Hula Hoop, which used Phillips' Marlex-brand resin, and demand for the hoops was far beyond expectations -- 25 million in the first four months, 100 million in the first year, according to Wikipedia.

In no time, Phillips sold all of that off-spec resin to Hula Hoop makers.

So happy birthday, Hula Hoop. I'm sure there are still some folks in Bartlesville, Okla, who will raise a glass and toast your success (and good timing) today.

B&B Molders LLC, a Mishawaka, Ind., injection molder, has stressed employee training for years. Today the emphasis paid off with a nice feature story in the South Bend Tribune.

The story quotes company President Britt Murphey saying that B&B has spent more than $100,000 on training and work force development since 2004, and that 59 percent of his workers have taken classes through the company's "Pay for Knowledge" program.

The program gives workers raises as they take course, plus one-time bonuses of $1,000 for an associate degree, $1,500 for a bachelor's and $2,000 for a master's.

"If they improve their skills, they are more valuable to us," Murphey told the Tribune.

B&B has stressed training all the way from the beginning, when the company was spun off from motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc. in 1996. It's nice to see B&B get some attention -- and this offers yet another good example of the kind of story that many local molders can share with their own local newspapers.

Kiplinger's Personal Finance recently named Houston, Texas, the No. 1 city in the United States. Frankly, I was surprised.

A lot of folks in the plastics industry live in Houston -- mostly in the resin sector. Plus the Space City hosts a handful of important conferences every year that bring many plastics processors to town. So it's safe to say a lot of the readers of this blog are familar with Houston.

What do you think, readers? Is Houston No. 1?

Here's, in part, what Kiplinger's had to say about Houston:

It's the city of big plans and no rules, beat-the-heat tunnels and loop-the-loop highways, world-class museums and wiry cowboys, humidity that demands an ice-cold martini and the biggest damn liquor store on the planet. How could you not love Houston?

For the record, here's the rest of Kiplinger's Top 10 U.S. cities: Raleigh, N.C.; Omaha, Neb.; Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Austin, Texas; Fayetteville, Ark.; Sacramento, Calif.; Des Moines, Iowa; and Provo, Utah.

Manufacturers put quite a bit of technological know-how into creating soccer balls. But no matter how perfect the sphere that they create, you can be sure there will be critics. We call these critics "goalkeepers."

Some players at the UEFA Euro 2008 soccer tournament are debating the merits of the ball supplied by Adidas, with material from Bayer MaterialScience AG.

This story, from Germany's Der Spiegel magazine Web site, notes that Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech called the new ball "unpredictable"; German keeper Jens Lehmann complained that it "wobbles," and German goalkeeper trainer Andreas Köpke said "Basically no one is 100 percent satisfied with the ball."

The Spiegel story notes that the ball's designer, Hans-Peter Nürnberg from Adidas, is used to goalkeepers' complaints. The story offers details on the aerodynamics of spinning vs. nonspinning balls, as well as some insight into the equipment wars currently played out between field players and goalkeepers.

Fun stuff, and amazing considering the number of kids around the world who play football in their bare feet, with balls made of old plastic bags tied and taped together.

Speaking of plastic, the "Europass gloria" ball being used at the tournament is plastic, too. It's polyurethane -- not leather -- and its panels are bonded, not sewn together. The surface of the ball has some unusual goose bump-like nubs that Adidas says "improves power transmission, creates greater swerve and increases accuracy on the pitch, in all conceivable weather conditions."

Wait a minute. "Creates greater swerve"? Maybe those crazy goalkeepers have a point!

For more information about the Europass ball, check out the material-related details from Bayer MaterialScience.

And thanks to all involved in the project for finally giving me an opportunity to do a blog item on one of my favorite topics, soccer!

National Public Radio has posted a story this afternoon about how the rising price of energy threatens the North American plastics industry.

Host Madeleine Brand interviewed Dow Chemical Co. CEO Andrew Liveris, who pointed out that he has been saying for years that the United States needed to do something or its chemical sector would face a crisis.

Then, host Alex Cohen talked to Tom Duffey, CEO of Germantown, Wis.-based injection molder Plastic Components Inc. (a Plastics News Processor of the Year finalist), who quoted some alarming statistics. He said that many molders have not been able to pass along resin price increases -- and the near-term future for those companies is dire:

"I've talked to a number of people in the industry who have a much broader perspective on the North American marketplace than I do, and it is their expectation that we can see an attrition rate of up to 30 percent of the molders in North America in the next 12 to 15 months. Which will involve hundreds and hundreds of companies, and thousands and thousands of employees in that industry," Duffey said.

"And a lot of these industries are heartland industries. These are Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan manufacturing companies that I think are going to be in severe distress over the next year as these economic forces work at us from two different sides of the equation. One is the decreasing demand for our products just because of the economic slowdown. And the other being the dramatic increase in the price of raw material, which is clearly the biggest cost driver in our industry."

Those are some awfully sobering statistics.

The New York Times Magazine had a feature story yesterday on marine debris, focusing on how plastic is reaching remote coasts in Alaska.

It's sad to see so much plastic trash spoiling this wilderness. No one lives in Gore Point, Alaska -- yet, in two weeks, nine volunteers managed to collect 30 tons of debris there, most of it plastic. Who's responsible? What can we do to stop it? The Times asks lot of questions, and does a good job of putting it all into perspective.

For example, it introduces readers to Charles Moore, the oceanographer who deserves much of the credit for publicizing the "Garbage Patch," and then the story points out that his work is "somewhat controversial."

Even marine biologists who share his alarm have misgivings about the sensationalism with which the Garbage Patch is sometimes described. Since the plastic debris in the North Pacific convergence zone is spread out unevenly across millions of miles of ocean, and since most of it is fragmentary, flowing through the water column like dust through air, the Garbage Patch bears little resemblance to a floating junkyard. But it is, numerous scientists assured me, very much for real.

Beth Flint’s nuanced testimony was typical. Flint is a wildlife biologist with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. One seabird she studies is the Laysan albatross, which, thanks to a recent Greenpeace ad campaign, has become plastic pollution’s most famous victim — its poster bird, if you will. The ad shows a photograph in which a slimy casserole of bottle caps, cigarette lighters and unidentifiable plastic shards spills from the downy belly of a necropsied Laysan albatross chick. “How to starve to death on a full stomach,” the caption reads. The image is not merely powerful, or shocking; it’s persuasively accusatory. Look, dear consumer, it seems to say; look at what you’ve done, look where what you throw away ends up.

There’s only one problem, Flint says. No one knows for certain whether plastic killed the albatross. Do plastic shards perforate the intestines of chicks? Sometimes. Does plastic obstruct the digestive tract or make a bird “starve to death with a full stomach”? Probably, in some cases. Then again albatrosses eat squid, and chitonous squid beaks are also indigestible. Are the toxins in and on plastics poisoning the birds, as Moore has proposed? It wouldn’t be surprising. According to Flint, long-lived seabirds like albatrosses do indeed have alarmingly high contaminant burdens. But research into the pathology of plastic poisoning is ongoing, and in the meantime, “it’s still all sort of circumstantial.”

Despite these caveats, Flint has little doubt that plastic is “clearly not good” for seabirds, and her praise for Moore is unequivocal. “I think that he’s done a tremendously valuable service to humanity by pursuing this when none of the big oceanographic or academic institutions or government institutions did,” Flint said. She predicts that other researchers will soon “get on his bandwagon.”

Later in the story, author Donovan Hohn looks how to deal with marine debris. Is there a solution?

As nearly everyone I spoke to about marine debris agrees, the best way to get trash out of our waterways is, of course, to keep it from entering them in the first place. But experts disagree about what that will take. The argument, like so many in American politics, pits individual freedom against the common good. “Don’t you tell me I can’t have a plastic bag,” Seba Sheavly, the marine-debris researcher, says, alluding to plastic-bag bans like the one San Francisco enacted last year. “I know how to dispose of it responsibly.” But proponents of bag bans insist that there is no way to use a plastic bag responsibly. Lorena Rios, an environmental chemist at the University of the Pacific, says: “If you go to Subway, and they give you the plastic bag, how long do you use the plastic bag? One minute. And how long will the polymers in that bag last? Hundreds of years.”

“The time for voluntary measures has long since passed,” says Steve Fleischli, president of Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of environmental watchdogs ...

The statistics quoted in this story will be considered authoritative, and will be repeated. So you can expect the Times story will raise the heat on the marine debris issue.

Glenn Beall, one of the leading names in the plastics industry for decades, is up for yet another honor. Beall has been nominated for the annual Engineer of the Year award by Design News magazine. And you can help him win.

Voting is open until July 11 on the Design News Web site. The winner will be announced Sept. 23 at National Manufacturing Week trade shows in Rosemont, Ill.

Beall is the sort of guy who needs no introduction, but here's what the magazine has to say about him:

Glenn Beall, whose career has spanned 50 years, is widely viewed as one of the principal engineers who advanced plastics design as a medical device engineer, consultant and teacher. He was an engineer in the research division of Abbott Laboratories from 1958 to 1968 where he developed medical devices, receiving twelve patents. He obtained 23 more patents for medical and other products, while operating his own company, Glenn Beall Engineering, Inc. from 1968 to 1993. In 1993 he formed his present company, Glenn Beall Plastics, Ltd., Libertyville, IL in 1993. Beall received the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Plastics Education from the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), which cited his work as an instructor on design and other aspects of technology. This work continues. Beall has lectured for Society of Plastics Engineers, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the Association of Rotational Molders (ARM), and other associations, at eight colleges and at seven companies. It is estimated that he has conducted over 650 seminars for more that 28,000 people.

For more background on Beall, check out the nice feature story that Bill Bregar, our senior staff reporter, wrote in 1997 when Beall was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame.

Typically people think plastics companies benefit when metal prices go up. But a custom injection molder in Morenci, Mich., discovered a big potential drawback, when an employee allegedly took $90,000 worth of brand-new molds and sold them for scrap -- for $540.

The story comes from The Daily Telegram in Adrian, Mich., which reports on the mystery of the missing molds at Palm Plastics Ltd. A scrap dealer in Ohio paid about $90 each for 10 molds. The price was based on their weight -- about 50 pounds each.

Unfortunately, they were melted down before police (and the company) could recover them.

The employee who allegedly took the molds claimed he thought they "were going to be thrown out," and "he felt he was doing the company a favor by hauling them away," according to the story.

Sounds more than a little suspicious. I think workers know the difference between a new tool and scrap metal.

The Houston Chronicle has two different takes on polystyrene foodservice products this week, and it's notable how they seem be be coming from such different points of view.

First, a science-related blog on the paper's Web site called SciGuy had an item on Sunday that asked "Better for the planet: Java in a mug or a Styrofoam cup?" It's notable, in this new era of PS product bans, that the report took a pretty balanced view. It noted that "it takes about 14 megajoules (or about 14 million times the energy required to lift an apple 1 meter) to manufacture a ceramic coffee mug. It takes 200,000 joules to make a polystyrene cup, about half the energy required to make a paper cup. So, even before other considerations, you'd have to use the ceramic mug 70 times to offset the energy of a single polystyrene cup."

Adding in the energy of washing the ceramic cup, and it turns out that the mug has to be used 1,006 times to equal PS cups.

"There are other factors, of course," notes SciGuy Eric Berger. "Polystyrene accumulates in landfills, and ceramic mugs much less so. But how many coffee mugs actually get used 1,006 times, or just about every day for three years?"

Yesterday the Chronicle took a different approach to PS, with a Page 1 story on the Houston Independent School District switching away from "environmentally unfriendly lunch trays" at the suggestion of a 10-year-old pupil. It notes that the district plans to spend an extra $160,000 next year in order to buy biodegradable trays, instead of the PS variety it buys now.

The story notes that: "The new trays take about nine months to decompose, compared with the hundreds of years it takes other polystyrene trays to break down, officials said."

In addition to the higher cost, the new trays also mean other changes. For one, kids need to learn to neatly stack used trays back in the boxes they came in, rather than throwing them out in plastic trash bags, so that when they are disposed, moisture and oxygen can get in and make them decompose.

The credit for the change goes to a rising sixth grader in the district.

Austin Fendley, who just finished fifth grade at Lovett Elementary, encouraged HISD to take the leap by publicly scolding them at a May school board meeting for using roughly 40 million foam trays a year.

Worried that the old trays were bad for the environment and for students' health, he started packing his own lunch and conducted a science experiment involving alternative products.

He said he's thrilled HISD is switching to a biodegradable trays. "I'm really surprised," he said from summer camp Tuesday. "I didn't know I would actually make a difference."

Perhaps Fendley, or someone like him, is the next generation's SciGuy. What will that mean for the future of the plastics industry?

It's interesting when plastics-related stories win journalism awards, in part because the reports tend to spawn similar stories in other media. So I'll note today one of the winners in the 2008 Gerald Loeb Awards for business journalism.

The first place award for feature writing went to Charles Fishman of Fast Company for his report, "Message in a Bottle." Here's what the news release announcing the winners had to say about the story:

Fishman took on a product that has become ubiquitous in everyday life -- plastic bottles of water -- and showed how wasteful this industry can actually be. At a time when so much attention is placed on protecting the environment, the story presents a thought-provoking argument about how consumers are sacrificing their ideals of a "green" society for the sake of convenience. Fishman's work was wonderfully crafted, combining great storytelling with compelling statistics to prove a powerful point.

For more detail, check out Fishman's report online here.

If someone with a video camera walked around the perimeter of your plant, would they find spilled pellets? That's basically what happened here, in a report on how a group called Surfers Against Sewage documented spilled pellets at a few plants in the UK, and showed how pellets eventually end up as hard-to-clean-up marine debris.

This is embarrassing for the plastics industry. Many companies take this problem seriously and have put systems in place to deal with pellet loss. But a few bad apples can cause big problems for the environment, and they give the whole industry a bad name.