Well known mold maker BA Die Mold Inc. in Aurora, Ill., is featured today in a New York Times story on how the credit crunch is impact small manufacturers.

The story, headlined "Small businesses feeling the chill," quotes BA Die Mold CEO Alan Petrucci starting in the second graph. He says his bank recently offered him a loan, and even though business is good right now, he won't borrow money to expand, only to upgrade.

"We are bracing for the downturn that is coming," Petrucci told the Times. "It is coming; there is no question about that."

Petrucci's take on the credit crunch is that banks have shed risky borrowers, but still are actively seeking business from creditworthy businesses, like BA Die.

With $2 million in annual revenue, almost no debt and enough orders to keep busy through January, Petrucci's lenders are coming to him, he says.

The rate they offer has risen to 7 percent, a percentage point more than in mid-September, but the lenders are persuasive. Petrucci says he will soon borrow $200,000 to replace an aging computer-controlled lathe and to acquire the latest in electrical cutting gear.

"We are not going to increase capacity; we are buying this equipment only because we want to do things better," Petrucci asserted. "We are gambling that this financial disaster is going to have a controlled solution, and hopefully it won't impact us too greatly."

The story goes on to briefly tell the story of how BA Die weathered the downturn that slammed U.S. toolmakers in 2001, when about 70 small shops in the Chicago area went out of business. Our reporter Rhoda Miel covered BA Die's comeback story last year, so if you want more detail check out our story.

I wonder, are other toolmakers and processors in agreement with Petrucci's take on the credit crunch? Is anyone having trouble getting credit to expand, make acquisitions, or just survive?

We had two credit crunch stories in this week's issue ("Economic woes a blow to struggling sectors," and "Tight credit squeezes machinery sales." We wi'll continue to follow (and editorialize) on this important problem.

It is no surprise that The New York Times recently editorialized in favor of the plastic bag ban in Westport, Conn. After all, we noted back in September that Westport resident David Pogue, technology columnist for the Times, spoke in favor of the ban at a public meeting and told the crowd: “...if you pass it, I’ll write about it ....”

It looks like he kept his promise.

Here's an excerpt from the newspaper's recent editorial on the topic:

Americans use and dispose of at least 100 billion bags every year. Although the plastics industry points out that plastic grocery bags are made more from natural gas than petroleum, natural gas is not a renewable resource and contributes to global warming. And about only 5 percent of all plastic bags are recycled nationwide. The rest end up in the trash, hanging in trees or floating in water where they menace marine life.

There are other possible remedies, including a constructive idea that has taken hold in Ireland. In 2002, Ireland became the first country in the world to impose a tax on plastic bags. Use of the bags dropped by 90 percent, and proceeds from the tax went to environmental causes.

If Ireland is any guide, tax laws may have greater impact on human behavior than recycling laws. Tax law could also be written to apply to an entire state, thus eliminating the need for town-by-town bans.

Today the Times' Web site has publised two letters to the editor in response to that editorial -- including one opposed to bag taxes. The counterpoint comes from Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council. Here's what he has to say:

We all want a cleaner environment, and based on the facts, your editorial misses the mark.

Bans and taxes penalize consumers and are not effective at preventing litter or enhancing our environment. Instead, consumers buy new bags to replace the grocery bags, because 92 percent of consumers reuse plastic grocery bags for a variety of household purposes. Ireland’s tax actually led to a 400 percent increase in the purchase of other types of plastic bags.

Moreover, plastic-bag bans generally increase demand for paper bags, increase energy use by 70 percent and double greenhouse gas emissions.

The more environmentally sustainable solution is to promote recycling. Plastic bag and film recycling grew 24 percent in 2006, and is being embraced from coast to coast, from California to New York City and Rhode Island.

Plastics are a valuable resource -- too valuable to waste -- and should be recycled. Let’s work together to promote recycling.

I think Dooley's response was on target. Recycling is the solution, and ACC (as well as communities and retailers) need to play a role. But, obviously, there's a lot more to be said on the topic. What other points should he have made?

Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. released a corporate responsiblity report this week, and plastics play a pretty major role in the story. The company highlights its efforts to make bottles lighter, and also to bring bottle manufacturing in-house. (Click here to download the full report, in PDF format).

The report includes a story quoting Walter Samylenko, director of packaging engineering, about the company's efforts to use less plastics through lightweighting.

Though bottles made from plastic are 100 percent recyclable and account for a relatively tiny amount of society's oil consumption, PBG has spent millions of dollars to reduce the amount of plastic it uses. "With our huge production volume, every gram of plastic taken out of a bottle translates to hefty savings," says Samylenko.

For example, in 2005 a half-liter Aquafina bottle weighed in at 24 grams. Today, a growing number of PBG plants can manufacture and fill bottles weighing as little as 14.8 grams. Twenty-ounce Aquafina bottles weigh 20.6 grams, down from 24 grams in 2005. The weight of 1.5-liter bottles used for Aquafi na and other beverages has dropped from 54 to 47 grams, and the caps are 1.6 grams lighter. PBG is also beginning to use bottles with 20 percent less plastic for non-carbonated brands such as Lipton Iced Tea, Tropicana juice drinks, Aquafina Alive and Aquafina FlavorSplash.

The company notes that over the past three years, it has saved 74 million pounds of plastic on Aquafina bottles alone.

The company also featured self-manufacturing as a way to generate "key environmental efficiencies" -- basically saving the cost of shipping empty bottles from a custom blow molder. In 2007, it noted, the company "announced its biggest self-manufacturing initiative yet, a plan to equip its largest plant, in Toronto, with four bottle blowing production lines by the end of 2008."

Pepsi Bottling Group claims its bottle blowing equipment "is more efficient than the older equipment that many third-party bottle manufacturers still use."

I have a feeling that some custom blow molders might dispute that claim... or at least argue that they could have modernized themselves, if Pepsi had not decided to pursue the self-manufacturing strategy.

Anyway, it's interesting to see how Pepsi Bottling is saving plastic (or, perhaps from a more skeptical perspective, spinning some of their business decisions as being related to corporate responsibility).

The Toronto Globe and Mail boils the phthalate safety issue down to the essence with this alarming headline today: "Plastics ingredient linked to smaller penises."

I've seen that angle emphasized before on other Web sites, but this is the first time I've seen it from a mainstream newspaper. Most have danced around the subject, but wouldn't "go there." (I hesitated to link to it myself, but I assume that my blog readers are mature adults who are interested in how the media is portraying plastics issues).

The story notes that researchers are looking at that angle because studies of male mice have suggested that some phthalates may have "the peculiar ability to shorten the space between the anus and the genitalia," known as the anogenital distance or AGD. "For mice, AGD is considered a measure of masculinity and a way to determine the sex of the pups. Scientists are so confident of the effect that they've given the impact of the chemical on male rodents a name -- phthalate syndrome," according to the Globe and Mail story.

This story was the result of a study published in the journal Environmental Research by a team led by Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester's school of medicine.

Swan's report was based on human research -- an examination of 106 U.S. boys, and "is among the first to raise the possibility that phthalate syndrome may also be at work in humans, because it found pregnant women with the highest amount of phthalates were markedly more likely to give birth to boys who had shorter anogenital distances."

The story concludes with this information:

Dr. Swan cautioned that the research was conducted on a relatively small number of boys, and the findings need to be independently verified by other investigators. It also isn't known what effect, if any, the chemical might have on the fertility of the boys, later in life, because the group would need to be followed into adulthood.

Nonetheless, Dr. Swan said she believes labelling laws need to be strengthened to allow consumers to choose whether to buy products or packaging that contain phthalates.

Cosmetics often contain phthalates, but the chemical isn't specifically mentioned because it is included in other listed items, such as fragrances.

Dr. Swan says she tries to buy phthalate-free cosmetics and doesn't store or microwave food in plastic containers, among other steps, to minimize her own exposure.

The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.'s blog is live and ready for prime time, so go take a look. It's located at plasticsindustry.blogspot.com, and it's called "In the Hopper."

Barry Eisenberg at SPI is the primary author/poster, but others (including SPI President and CEO Bill Carteaux) can and will post items.

It looks like they've been posting on a wide variety of topics during the warm-up period, including energy policy, sustainability, and some general-interest items. There's also a blog roll with links to other plastics-specifics blogs.

This should be an interesting site to watch. Welcome to blogland, SPI.

Erie, Pa., is one of those "towns built around plastics," like Evansville, Ind., and Leominster, Mass. Right now, the local plastics industry in Erie is suffering, and the Erie Times-News has a well researched story on the topic today.

OK, I don't like "The Graduate" introduction. Please, let's stop using that cliché!

But after that, the story does a good job folding in statistics and and expert opinions on what's been going on in plastics in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The news angle for the story is the bankruptcy and pending sale of Erie Plastics Corp. The company has lost nearly 400 workers, and is down to about 200. On Sept. 22, the union there voted to take wage concessions. But, as the story notes, the job losses at Erie Plastics are "just the tip of the iceberg."

At the beginning of 2001, about 5,428 Erie County residents worked in the plastics industry. By the first quarter of this year, that number had plunged nearly 43 percent to 3,083.

And those numbers don’t take into account a layoff of 192 people that Erie Plastics announced in March.

What's going on? The story quotes several experts. Kurt Duska, owner and president of Engineered Plastics in Lake City, Pa., blamed global competition.

“There is no question about it,” he said. “I talked about this in 2001 when I came back from China. I stood up in a room (of shop and plastics company owners) and said, ‘Probably 40 percent of you won’t be here in seven to 10 years,’ and it’s come true,” Duska said.

He said that although his company is growing, "I would never recommend to someone today to get into injection molding," adding, “It would be almost impossible to do a startup and make it.”

Jeff Mengel of Plante & Moran PLLC and Hoop Roche of Erie Plastics both blamed overcapacity. Mengel estimated that U.S. injection molders are running at about 50 percent capacity.

The story's not all gloom-and-doom. It notes that some local companies are doing well and even expanding, and that rising wages in China and high transportation costs could bring work back to Erie.

Overall, though, this isn't a story that's going to encourage young people to consider careers in plastics. Unfortunately, that's the current state of the industry, and not just in Erie. We really need a bit of improvement in the economic outlook to make things better.

D-M-E Co. is the latest company in the plastics industry to set up a Facebook page. The Madison Heights, Mich.-based mold technology supplier sent out a news release about the decision today, along with a link to its Facebook page.

This seems like a good way to communicate with younger potential employees. Having a Web site isn't enough anymore. If you want to show off your company online, you should have a listing on Wikipedia, as well as utilizing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Here's what D-M-E has to say about the decision to join Facebook:

Facebook, the preeminent social networking Web site with over 100 million active users, allows students and companies alike to connect through mutual interests.

The future of the plastics industry is dependent upon gaining interest from younger generations and recruiting talented individuals. D-M-E’s Facebook page serves as a way to publicize its student scholarship, and support D-M-E’s overall commitment to enhancing education and interest in the plastics industry.

The D-M-E Facebook page includes a video that provides an overview of the company, and technical videos on D-M-E products.

Bisphenol A safety continues to make headlines. On Friday, the attorneys general from three states sent letters to 11 companies that make baby bottles and baby formula containers, asking they stop using BPA.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal criticized the Food and Drug Administration, which has taken the position that exposure to BPA is safe.

"Unfortunately the federal agency, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, has been asleep at the switch, in fact resistant to respecting the scientific evidence that grave harm can result in use of this product," Blumenthal said.

On Saturday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Charles Gelman, a retired medical supply manufacturer, gave $5 million to the research center of Martin Philbert, chairman of the FDA panel that is preparing to rule on BPA safety. The newspaper noted that Gelman believes BPA is "perfectly safe," and that worries about health problems from the chemical are exaggerated by "mothers' groups and others who don't know the science."

The story notes that Philbert did not disclose the donation.

The Journal Sentinel described Gelman, in part, as an "anti-regulation activist and an outspoken supporter of organizations including JunkScience.com, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute that attack the credibility of government and academic scientists on such topics as global warming and hazardous chemicals."

Finally, last week, researchers at the University of Cincinnati reported that exposure to BPA may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments.

The researchers, led by Nira Ben-Jonathan, said they have evidence that BPA induces a group of proteins that protect cancer cells from the toxic effects of chemotherapy.

"Resistance to chemotherapy is a major problem for cancer patients, especially those with advanced or metastatic disease," she said.

"These data," study authors write, "provide considerable support to the accumulating evidence that BPA is hazardous to human health."

Here's an amusing little story from London. The Daily Mail newspaper in February launched a Banish the Bags campaign, "in an effort to rid the country of single-use plastic bags, the most ubiquitous feature of our disposable society."

Now The Daily Express (which touts itself as the "World's Greatest Newspaper") has revealed (I couldn't resist using one Britishism...) that its rival's war on plastic bags is hypocritical, since the Daily Mail actually owns a company that makes plastic bags. Here's an excerpt from the big bag scoop:

The hypocritical Daily Mail told yesterday how plastic waste is tipping Britains seas towards ecological disaster. Fish, mammals and birds will be driven to extinction within decades, it said. ... But the newspaper failed to tell its readers that the company that owns the Daily Mail also owns a firm which produces plastic bags.

The High Speed Bagging Comp­any Limited, based in east London, wraps the Daily Mail, and the Mail on Sunday, in polythene bags for weekend promotions.

It wraps millions of printed products in plastic bags, according to industry experts. And these are the sort of plastics that are increasingly poisoning the world's oceans.

Environmentally conscious readers will be appalled to know that the newspaper group needlessly produces millions of plastic bags, known as polybags in the trade.

In the years since the firm began using polybags, millions of plastic-wrapped copies of its newspapers have been returned unsold by increasingly fed-up newsagents, adding to the mountain of plastic waste.

It will be interesting to see how the Daily Mail responds. I imagine they can argue that the bags are recyclable, and that customers prefer to get their papers dry and in good condition.

Canon Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. made headlines this week for materials-related choices in their electronics products. One of the companies chose to work with bio-based plastics, while one the other trumpeted a move away from plastics.

Canon announced that it had developed a new bio-based plastic that will be used in exterior plastic parts for office products that will be launched early next year. Canon worked with Toray Industries Inc. to develop the material, called "Ecodear." The resin is based on polylactic acid, according to a report in our sister publication Plastics & Rubber Weekly.

"Particularly in the area of flame retardance, Ecodear is the world's first bio-based plastic applicable for use in multifunction office systems to achieve 5V classification under the UL 94 flammability testing program," Canon said in a news release. "Compared with conventional petroleum-based plastics used in multifunction office systems, the new bio-based plastic developed by Canon and Toray offers an expected reduction in manufacturing-related CO2 emissions of approximately 20 percent. The development of the new bio-based plastic will enable its use not only for select parts in multifunction office systems, but also for replacing petroleum-based plastics used for exterior parts, which require a high level of flame retardance."

Apple went the plastics-avoidance route, introducing a new line of MacBook laptops with aluminum unibody enclosures. The move has been rumored all summer, so it wasn't a big surprise. But it still seemed like the announcement generated quite a bit of news coverage.

“Apple has invented a whole new way of building notebooks from a single block of aluminum. And, just as important, they are the industry’s greenest notebooks,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

Greenpeace, which has been pressuring Apple to change its material usage, praised the move -- not specifically because of the switch from plastics to aluminum, but for continuing to move away from PVC and brominated flame retardants.

"The new MacBook's are a major step forward," said Greenpeace's Zeina Alhajj. "The models are still not entirely free of PVC, but they mark an industry first in having a BFR-free motherboard. Apple is now setting standards for other manufacturers to follow."

Those MacBooks still carry a premium price, so don't expect the competition to follow the leader and switch to aluminum.

I think it will be interesting to see how Canon's PLA products sell next year -- and how much the material choice is featured in the company's marketing efforts.

Canada's news media is reporting today that the federal government there is set to add bisphenol A to its list of "toxic substances" tomorrow. According to this Toronto Globe and Mail report, the move will make Canada " the first country in the world to take such aggressive action against the controversial chemical."

What will this mean? According to the story, "Declaring the synthetic chemical toxic opens the way for regulatory action, and the government has already announced that it wants to ban plastic baby bottles made from the chemical and work with food and packing companies to reduce the amounts leaching out of tin cans into infant formula."

The decision isn't a surprise -- Health Canada and Environment Canada revealed the draft proposal back in April, which touched off a flurry of activiity. Big retailers in Canada have already stopped selling polycarbonate baby bottles. But we can expect to see another barrage of news stories this weekend as a result of the move, and increasing pressure on other governments to adopt the same strict policy.

Until now, the great bottled vs. tap water debate has largely been a decision left to personal preference. Sure, some communities have stopped buying bottled water. But those decisions haven't affected bottled water sales much -- they've just meant some cities took bottled water from city hall vending machines, or stopped selling water at community events.

If bottled water sales have dropped -- and the experts say it has -- that seems to have more to do with the economy than with the anti-bottle movement.

But in Florida, the debate might be getting a bit louder, now that Miami-Dade county has gone on the offensive with a 30-second radio ad that slams bottled water. Nestle Waters North America is considering fighting back, according to this story in The Miami Herald.

In the radio ad, a talking faucet extols Miami-Dade's tap water as cheaper, purer and safer than bottled water.

It may have sounded innocuous to most listeners, but the 30-second spot left the nation's largest purveyor of bottled water boiling mad.

Nestle Waters North America, which makes nearly $4 billion a year selling Zephyrhills and other brands, is threatening to sue if the county doesn't kill commercials the company brands as false advertising.

''It's an attack on the integrity of the company,'' said Nestle spokesman Jim McClellan. ``It's an attack on the product we produce -- and it's blatantly wrong.''

The county paid $100,000 for the radio ads, which John Renfrow, director of the Water and Sewer Department, told the Herald were aimed at educating the area's immigrant population, many from countries where tap water is not safe.

"'This is your water faucet speaking, " the ad says. "You think bottled water is purer and safer? You think it's better? Well, you're wrong. It's just the opposite. Bottled water is not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Tap water is. That's why you always can be sure Miami-Dade tap water is superior. Stop wasting your money!"

Nestle responded by testing Miami-Dade's water -- it claims the results show the samples exceed federal standards for fecal coliform -- and sent complaints to the county and the state attorney general.

"'When you make a statement and say your water is better than our water, we want to find out," Kevin Mathews, director of health and environmental affairs for Nestle, told the Herald.

So now the gloves are off. Nestle has shown that its willing to step up and take legal action when bottled water comes under attack, even when its own brands aren't specifically named. I don't think the response will put an end to this debate, but it may discourage some cities from taking aggressive anti-bottled water stands.

PlasticsEurope, the trade association for European resin producers, recently sponsored a Youth Parliament Debate on the subject, "Are plastics part of the problem or the solution?"

The winning debater took the pro-plastics position, according to this video from EUX.TV, a Dutch WebTV service.

Students were divided into two teams and asked to support or oppose the role of plastics in the topics of energy, resource efficiency and climate protection.

PlasticsEurope notes that "Zan Zveplan, a 17-year-old student from Slovenia, stole the show and won-over the crowd with his enthusiasm, intelligence, and charming personality. His ability to grab the audience's attention and accurately summarise his team's arguments won him the award for best debater at the European Parliament in Belgium."

PlasticsEurope Vice President Martin Pugh said he hoped the students would go back to their communities and be "ambassadors for plastics."

The credit crunch is one of the hottest stories in financial journalism right now. So when HLTH Corp. announced yesterday that it was terminating its merger agreement with WebMD Health Corp., it generated a lot of interest.

Why? After all, HLTH already owns 84 percent of WebMD. And neither company is exactly a household name.

Because of the credit crunch angles!

In a news release, The companies said they were dropping the plan so that WebMD would "not to be encumbered by $650 million in long-term debt that would be coming due in 18 to 36 months. By terminating their merger, HLTH and WebMD will retain financial flexibility and be in an advantageous position to pursue potential acquisition opportunities expected to be available to companies with significant cash resources in this period of financial market uncertainty."

Plus, they noted that the companies' attempt to sell Porex Corp., a company that makes plastic health-care products, was proving to be difficult: "The boards also took into consideration the fact that the sale of Porex has been delayed as a result of one of the leading potential buyers having difficulty arranging financing for a purchase because of conditions in the credit markets. HLTH is continuing its sales process for Porex with other potential buyers, but cannot provide assurance as to the timing or terms for a transaction."

Business journalists (Plastics News included) are watching for credit-crunch-related stories, so that's why this non-deal from HLTH and WebMD attracted a lot of attention.

If you're aware of any other deals or expansion projects impacted by the crunch, let me know.

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to replace 20 percent of the plastics used in its automobiles with bioplastics by 2015, according to this story from Nikkei Business Publications Inc.'s Tech-On! news Web site.

Toyota's Masatoshi Matsuda announced the goal at the BioJapan 2008 conference, held Oct. 15-7 in Yokohama. The report notes that Toyota has been cautious about using bioplastics. In 2003, it started making the spare tire cover and floor mat for the Raum from a composite material made of polylactic acid and kanaf. (The Raum is sold only in Japan).

"We have not used bioplastics for any of our cars since then," Matsuda said. "We are not ready to use more bioplastics in view of the balance between the cost and the performances such as properties and formability."

But the company will start to use more bioplastics -- starting with interior parts -- in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, he said.

My experience with Japanese OEMs is that they're serious about these sorts of pledges -- and they often underpromise and then overdeliver. So 20 percent may not seem huge, and 2015 may seem like quite a few years from now, but I wouldn't be surprised to see progress toward meeting this goal a lot sooner.

You may have heard that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to cut back its plastic bag waste by one-third by 2013. It should come as no surprise that some people don't think that's fast enough.

It's interesting that Andrew Winston, a nationally recognized expert on green business, counts himself among that group. He wrote about the decision on Oct. 15 on the Harvard Business Review's Leading Green blog.

Winston isn't a radical environmentalist (not that there's anything wrong with that...) -- he's the type of expert who companies like Wal-Mart hire to give them advice on how to deal with sustainability issues. So his opinions carry a lot of weight with many in the business community.

Here, in part, is what Winston had to say:

I'm generally a fan of doing something now and getting moving. But I found myself thinking at the Wal-Mart announcement about much larger goals. Instead of targeting one-third of plastic waste by 2013, why not eliminate all plastic bags by then, or eliminate half by next year? It's been done before. IKEA put a small charge (a nickel) on bags and eliminated 90% in one year in multiple countries. ...

In the case of bags, Wal-Mart and other retailers are setting up recycling programs in stores. The efforts strike me as a bit onerous and expensive. It seems possible that going for a much larger change -- through, for example, an IKEA-like charge to signal to customers the behavior change desired, or a Whole-Foods-like rebate for bringing your own bag -- may actually save a ton of money and effort. It may be counterintuitive that a larger initiative could be cheaper, but it's worth pursuing. Of course charging customers has some downsides, but Wal-Mart could make the shift more palatable by funneling proceeds to good causes in the community.

I imagine that some plastics industry folks would disagree, since setting up in-stores bag recycling is the centerpiece in most efforts to save plastic bags from being taxed or banned.

Winston will focus on plastics more on Nov. 6, when he gives a keynote speech at the Sustain 08 conference in Chicago. The event is sponsored by Plastics News and the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.

It will be interesting to see how Winston spins the get-rid-of-plastic-bags message in front of that crowd.

Experts can disagree about whether toys can safely contain certain phthalates. But that's no excuse for the lack of sound judgment exhibited by some of the people featured in today's Wall Street Journal story, "Toys Containing Banned Plastics Still on Market."

The angle: there's a flood of toys hitting stores nationwide that contain phthalates, because some retailers are rushing to sell them before a Feb. 10 ban takes effect.

Consumers will see "toys marked down at a discount without knowing that they contain a substance that will be banned in February," Elizabeth Hitchcock of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group told the newspaper.

A spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission defended the practice, telling the WSJ that Congress did not deem phthalates unsafe, but only banned future sales.

Here are some questions to consider.

1. If CPSC doesn't think Congress thought these toys were unsafe, why does it think they banned future sales?
2. If Congress thinks the toys aren't safe, yet retailers are trying to push them out the door now (just ahead of the Christmas shopping season), what will they do if some lawyers decide that would make an interesting class-action lawsuit?
3. And if Congress thinks these toys are unsafe, why did they allow retailers to continue to sell them until Feb. 10? These are toy ducks and teethers we're talking about, not life-saving medicines.

The lack of common sense is, apparently, contagious.

How's that for an alphabet soup headline? But the story itself looks quite serious: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported yesterday that it may have discovered the reason that the Food and Drug Administration has taken the position that bisphenol A is safe for food packaging.

It's because the American Chemistry Council and the American Plastics Council helped do FDA's research.

"Although the Food and Drug Administration will not reveal who prepared its draft, the agency's own documents show that the work was done primarily by those with the most to gain by downplaying concerns about the safety of the chemical," according to the report by Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger. "That includes Stephen Hentges, executive director of the American Chemistry Council's group on bisphenol A, who commissioned a review of all studies of the neurotoxicity of bisphenol A and submitted it to the FDA. The FDA then used that report as the foundation for its evaluation of the chemical on neural and behavioral development."

FDA's draft report, released in August, said BPA is safe.

According to the Journal Sentinel story, a U.S. House subcommittee is asking FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach about the issue. It quotes from a letter the subcommittee sent to FDA, asking "Specifically, why industry-funded studies provide the basis of your regulatory decisions and why the totality of the science around the chemical continues to be ignored by your science-based agency."

The story includes ACC's side, but saves the reaction to the last three paragraphs. It quotes ACC spokeswoman Tiffany Harrington saying that Hentges was acting appropriately in his capacity as an advocate for the plastics industry.

"We are a stakeholder just like anyone else," she told the newspaper. "It's part of the process."

It certainly makes sense to include input from manufacturers in the regulatory process. After all, they have a lot of expertise. But how can they contribute without commercial interests getting in the way, or without accusations of having a conflict of interest?

Our sister newspaper Waste News today has a story about a recent fire at Grossman Group Inc., a Columbus, Ohio, paper and plastics recycler.

The Oct. 18 fire destroyed the 32,000-square-foot building, equipment and about 750 tons of paper and plastics, according to President Steve Grossman. The fire was started by a spark from a contractor's torch.

Grossman said three other local recyclers stepped in to help, offering to process materials for his company.

Grossman Group leased the building from the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio.

Plastic card maker CPI Card Group Inc. is on board the sustainability bandwagon with a line of biodegradable PVC cards using a material that it calls bioPVC. U.S. Bank announced yesterday that it has started offering gas cards made of the material to customers in the company's Fleet Systems Inc. program.

A news release from U.S. Bank quotes Michael Oleniczek, senior vice president, saying: "Our clients are increasingly concerned about selecting products and services that have less impact on the environment. We expect these cards to be extremely popular."

CPI has produced millions of bioPVC cards. The cards are made of 99 percent PVC, and biodegrades in nine months to five years in soil, water, compost, or wherever microorganisms are present.

CPI Card Group VP of sales Bob Clarke added: "The finished card performs equal to cards manufactured on regular PVC as no biodegradation takes place unless the product is in a fertile environment such as compost."

CPI Card Group also offers cards made of NatureWorks PLA, as well as cards made with recycled content ranging from 25-100 percent.

I'm curious about how these cards made of alternative materials will catch on. On one hand, I recognize that credit card recycling programs have limited appeal -- the volumes would be too small to handle, and consumers would never risk sending old cards to be recycled. So the idea of having a card that won't be around for decades, if not centuries, must appeal to some consumers.

On the other hand, how many people are going to send cards to composting facilities? If you cut them up and put them in the trash, are they really going to biodegrade if they end up in a landfill?

If you're wondering, the volume of plastic cards manufactured each year is pretty significant. According to the International Card Manufacturers Association, 19.2 billion cards were made in 2007, which is up 12 percent over 2006. North America is the largest card unit market, with more than 9.1 billion cards manufactured in 2007.

Add Dell Inc. to the list of computer and office equipment makers that are touting materials-related choices in their marketing efforts. The company today announced that its new OptiPlex 960 desktop PCs have at least 10 pecent post-consumer plastic in the housing.

"That’s about the equivalent of three plastic water bottles,” Curtis Campbell, the OptiPlex’s product manager, told earth2tech.com. The line of green PCs is aimed mostly at institutional buyers, according to the Web site.

It will be interesting to see which plastic wins the hearts and minds of environmentally minded office product buyers -- recycled content like Dell is using, or biopolymers like Canon Inc.

The economic slowdown (is that term too mild? I hope not) has some companies cutting back on staff travel. This story from yesterday's Chicago Tribune notes that airlines, hotels, restaurants and others that cater to the millions of tourists and conventioneers who visit the region each year expect to see a sharp drop in visitors in the months ahead.

Already, the big airlines -- United, American and Southwest -- are cutting flights to O'Hare and Midway airports "on an unprecedented scale in anticipation of a looming recession," the story says. Flights to O'Hare during the fourth quarter will be down 11 percent from 2007 levels.

"People are just now doing their travel budgets [for 2009], and that's where the cuts will come," Vaughn Cordle, chief analyst for AirlineForecasts, told the Tribune. "It's going to get worse before it gets better."

Conference and trade show attendance also is expected to drop, and restaurants don't expect to see an uptick until the second half of 2009.

I hope the experts are being overly pessimistic. There's still a lot to be gained by seeing customers and clients in person. With any luck, things will be looking up eight months from now, when NPE 2009 comes to Chicago's McCormick Place.

Teel Plastics Inc., a tubing and profile extruder, was named 2008 Business of the Year by the Baraboo, Wis., Area Chamber of Commerce.

This story from the Baraboo News Republic notes that Teel recently built "a 150,000-square-foot environmentally conscious headquarters in Baraboo and has plans to add 75 jobs to its existing base of 240 employees." On top of that, the company plans to create a business park in the city to spur additional economic development.

"We really want to invest in this community," Teel Chairman Jay Smith said at the awards ceremony. "This community is important to us."

It's nice to see a plastics processor recognized for being an exemplary corporate citizen. Congratulations to Jay Smith and to all of his team at Teel.