Here's a story I've been watching for (and I assume some Plastics Blog readers have been too): Archer Daniels Midland Co. has started production at its starch-based polymer plant in Clinton, Iowa, according to a report in the Clinton Herald.

Jason Nevel's story says that after four years of construction, the plant may begin shipping commercial goods next month. The newspaper quotes plant manager John Morrison, who said test runs have been conducted since December, and the plant will be in full operation this summer.

At full capacity, the plant will produce 50,000 tons of Mirel-brand polymer annually, using ADM's wet corn mill as a feedstock.

"To be part of a new plant that's first-of-its-kind in the world is really a lifetime opportunity for most of us," said Kevin Moore, ADM bio-products general manager.

The plant will make Mirel for Telles, a joint venture between Metabolix and ADM.

Here's a radical idea: a sustainability committee in one California city, concerned about litter and marine debris issues, wants to start a "massive public education" program instead of banning products like plastic bags.

That's the recommendation of the South Lake Tahoe Sustainability Commission, according to this story from the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

Commission Chair Kirstin Cattell told the Daily Tribune's Adam Jensen that the board wants to make a positive impact on the environment.

The panel decided to stress education after also considering two more onerous options: putting a fee on disposable plastic containers, or banning the products.

South Lake Tahoe is aware of the potential legal hurdles of those alternative paths, so it decided to try education instead.

The commission plans to meet March 17 to get public input on the plan.

It will be interesting to see how education works, and whether recycling plays a role.

Recyclers definitely can use more material -- that message came through loud and clear at the Plastics Recycling 2010 conference in Austin, Texas, that I attended.

I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but product bans could be a big problem for recyclers -- they need more material, not less.

Recyclers should play a more vocal role in opposition to product bans. That could raise public awareness of the fact that these products that many people want to ban are, in fact recyclable, and there's a pretty good market for them right now, in North America.

If education fails, you can be sure that there will be pressure in South Lake Tahoe to look at taxes and bans instead. (And there will be continued pressure from Sacramento to ban plastic bags statewide.)

Beth Terry, author of the Fake Plastic Fish blog, is in the news today, with a story and video on KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco.

The focus is Terry's effort to minimize the amount of plastic in her life.

According to Teresa Garcia's story, Terry consumed only 3.7 pounds of plastic in 2009 -- she knows because she saved it all in a bag. That's about 4 percent of the national average of 88 pounds per person a year.

The video includes a quick list of tips for others who would like to live without plastic, such as using stainless drink containers, reusable wood utensils, metal razors, and even a glass straw.

Blog readers will recall that Terry made headlines back in 2008, when she convinced Clorox Co. to set up a system to accept used Brita water filters for recycling.

Terry also wrote a letter to the editor that Plastics News published on Feb. 22. Her letter argued in favor of plastic bag taxes and bans.

It's interesting that in the 20 years since Plastics News started publishing, the plastics critics who have been prominent in the media have changed.

In the "old days," news reports likely would have quoted people like Richard Denison at Environmental Defense Fund, or Rick Hind at Greenpeace.

Today the spotlight instead is on people (and groups) like Beth Terry, David de Rothschild and the Surfriders Foundation.

It's an indication of how much plastics litter and marine debris have become local issues -- while at the same time interest has spread so quickly around the world.

Here's another one of those posts where you have to click through to see the photos.

The io9 blog has a photo gallery post today titled "Nothing Is Ever Junk When It Can Be Reembodied." It features the work of sculptor Sayaka Ganz,, who created beautiful horses that appear to be emerging from a wall.

When you get close to the sculptures, you realize they are are made entirely from junk plastic, like discarded packaging and foodservice ware.

Ganz had this to say about her work:

I find discarded objects from peoples' houses and give them a second life, a new home. For my sculptures I use plastic utensils, toys and metal pieces among other things. I only select objects that have been used and discarded. The human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes. My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive.

The comments on the blog are also worth a look. So far, at least, there are no attacks on the plastic material -- only praise for the pieces.

Thanks to Plastics News staff reporter Rhoda Miel, for pointing out this item.

Polycarbonate packaging has received most of the attention related to bisphenol A safety.

But a story from The Washington Post today puts the spotlight on metal can manufacturers.

While plastics processors have alternatives to polycarbonate that they can use to make baby bottles and sport drink containers, according to the Post report, metal can companies are having problems finding alternatives to epoxy liners.

"Major U.S. foodmakers are quietly investigating how to rid their containers of Bisphenol A," the story says, but the goal is "taking years to reach, costing millions and proving surprisingly elusive."

One person, identified as a source at a major U.S. food company, told Post staff reporter Lyndsey Layton: "We don't have a safe, effective alternative, and that's an unhappy place to be. ... No one wants to talk about that."

Organic food company Eden Foods Inc. managed to get one can supplier to switch from epoxy resin to an oleoresin liner, but that cost about 2.2 cents more per can, and didn't work with acidic foods like canned tomatoes.

For its part, the North American Metal Packaging Alliance stressed that epoxy-lined cans are safe, and they help protect consumers from serious food-borne illnesses.

What's the state of the bottled water market?

A year ago, we reported that the economy and environmental pressure were putting pressure on the bottled water sector, and the days of double-digit annual growth was over.

Further proof of the trend comes today with the release of Nestle SA's 2009 financial results. The financial press is reporting that the company's water business is struggling.

But Martin Gelnar, writing for The Wall Street Journal's "The Source" blog, says there's still hope for the sector:

Public opinion may be against Nestle and other bottled water companies, but it is likely that environmental concerns will calm over time.

Potentially more important is the fact that such discussions have little impact in emerging markets, where demand is expected to rise substantially in the next few years.

Meanwhile, bottled water companies are working hard to reduce their environmental impact. Check out our report on the International Bottled Water Association's study of beverage packaging, which found:

• The average PET bottled water container weighed about 19 grams in 2000; by 2008, the average amount of PET in each bottle declined to about 13 grams.
• During the eight-year period, more than 1.3 billion pounds of PET resin was saved by the bottled-water industry through container lightweighting.
• In 2008 alone, the bottled water industry saved 445 million pounds of PET by reducing bottle weights.

The Feb. 8 issue of Plastics News includes an editorial against legislative bans and taxes on plastic bags. [I'm the author, the column is headlined "Do you need a bag? Yeah, make it plastic." And, as usual, the cartoon from Rich Williams is brilliant.]

But Plastics News isn't alone in editorializing against bag bans this week. The Gazette Times in Corvallis, Ore., has a column headlined "Trust market to kill plastic bag use."

Sure, that headline doesn't scream "pro-plastic." But the columns have some parallels.

Both criticize legislative efforts to ban or tax plastic bags. The Corvallis column is aimed at a proposal from two Oregon legislators -- Portland Democrat Mark Hass and Central Point Republican Jason Atkinson -- that would ban plastic bags.

Hass told the Oregonian newspaper that plastic bags contribute to litter, are hard to recycle, hurt marine life and are made from fossil fuels. That's all true.

It also is true, however, that the bags can be recycled. (It's also true, for what it's worth, that 85 percent of the plastic bags used in the United States are made in this country, and that some 4,000 Americans are directly employed in their manufacture.)

The best approach here, we believe, is to continue with efforts to persuade consumers to move to reusable bags. We trust that the market will follow consumer preference. We don't need to use a heavy-handed approach such as a ban or a surcharge on the plastic bags. That's a pain for consumers -- and it could potentially hurt retailers, who frankly don't need any additional worry right now.

I like the approach -- encouraging the public to stop being wasteful, without resorting to passing a law to require it. It echoes my column, where I wrote that bag taxes and bans aren't the answer, but I don't object to non-legislative efforts to get people to cut down on bag consumption.

A couple of plastic products are getting media attention today because of their connection with the Super Bowl.

The Facts newspaper in Clute, Texas, has a feature about Dow Chemical Co.'s Primacor resin, used in the face masks for both the Colts and Saints.

The coating being used during an event as global as the Super Bowl, which is seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world, shows how Dow products are applied, but also is fun for employees, Dow spokeswoman Tracie Copeland said.

"Being able to point to something is just fun," Copeland said. "It's nice to be able to say, 'Hey, I make that out in the plants and, because of what we make, we make those guys safer and keep the helmets stronger.'"

Meanwhile, up in New York at the Rochester Business Journal, the attention is on ice cream. More specifically, the Buddy Cone, a polystyrene ice cream packaging "system" from Buddy Cone Systems Inc., which the newspaper reports is being used at Sun Life Stadium in Miami.

"We've always known the Buddy System was a super product," President and CEO Robert Sotile told the RBJ. "Now, it's confirmed."

The Super Bowl is all about hype, right? Everything about it -- silly interviews, expensive commercials, huge half-time show -- screams "watch me, watch me."

So it's no surprise that some plastics companies are going to seek a bit of attention for their role in the spectacle.

Watch for more cool plastics-in-sports applications coming soon from the Winter Olympics.

Many in the plastics industry know Eastman Chemical Co. as a PET resin supplier. But the company may be planning to exit that business, according to a story in the daily paper where the company is headquartered.

The Kingsport, Tenn., Times-News posted a story headlined "Eastman might pull plug on PET business."

The story was generated from an interview that Eastman President and CEO Jim Rogers gave to the newspaper on Feb. 3.

Rogers said PET hasn't made any money for Eastman since 2005. The company has made some major changes in the PET business in recent years -- selling plants around the world, and investing millions in its IntegRex technology at its only remaining PET plant in Columbia, S.C.

Now, he said, it's time for the business to start to perform.

"Our patience is measured in months, not years," Rogers told the newspaper.

"I think the real test is going to come in the second quarter to see just how much our guys have been able to do about demonstrating to the markets that we've got our act together now, and we deserve our fair piece of ... higher-value segments." Rogers said.

"We're going to get through the second quarter and see how we do, and then we'll take a look," he said.

That's about as clear a signal I've seen that a business has a very specific deadline to show improved results.

It's also a pretty clear signal to competitors that this business is on the block.

Eastman isn't alone in looking for a buyer for some major plastics assets. It looks like the resin sector is in for some major restructuring in 2010.

Remember the Plastiki -- the boat made out of old PET bottles that David de Rothschild plans to sail from California to Australia, to raise awareness of marine debris?

The Plastics Blog first discovered the project almost two years ago. Now, finally, the voyage is almost ready to get started.

Carl Nolte of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rothschild took the 60-foot-long catamaran out for a shakedown cruise on Feb. 3, and the actual voyage should get started next month, weather permitting.

Some interesting snippets from the story: the boat's twin hulls are made of 12,500 PET bottles, which are filled with dry ice.

Nolte says the boat is "no beauty," describing it as looking "like a kid's science project."

Let's hope it's sturdy enough to safely carry its 8-member crew on the long haul to Australia.

"Paper or plastic" has become a cliche, but with retailers trying to cut down on plastic bag usage, consumers should get used to a new phrase at the checkout: "Do you need a bag?"

Getting asked that question doesn't bother me, but it sure set off Carol Midgley, a feature writer and columnist for The Times. She recently wrote a funny column for the London paper headlined "Saving the planet or just toying with us?"

Midgley was buying some figurines at The Disney Store, and the clerk asked if she preferred to pay 5 pence for a carrier bag, £1.50 for a "re-usable" carrier, or skip using a bag entirely.

"Now hold on a minute, matey," she wrote. "I don't mind doing my bit; I know that charging for bags might be the only way to cure humanity's preposterous wastefulness. But I draw the line at being lectured on plastic overuse by a chuffing toy retailer."

She added later: "Being urged to be eco-conscious by any toy shop is like being chided for your caffeine intake by a crystal meth addict."

Delightful stuff. Thanks to Plastics News' correspondent in Mexico City, Steve Downer, for pointing it out today.

Every once in a while I come across something that's blogworthy just to share the photos. That's the case today in a post from the Treehugger.com sustainability Web site, which posted an item today headlined "Amazing House Made Entirely of Plastic Bottles from Argentina."

The walls of the home are made from 1,200 PET bottles, and its roof is made of more than 1,300 Tetra Pack cartons. It also has 140 compact disk cases in its doors and windows, 120 bottles in its couches, and another 200 bottles in a bed.

There's also a pretty cute children's play-house, also made of PET bottles.

The owner, Alfredo Santa Cruz, said he made the buildings to show the value of materials we throw away.

"Domestic waste can be transformed into useful stuff. We developed our own technique, which allows people to build a house that's perfectly functional at a very low cost and with their own hands. This is not just a project, but a reality," he said.

The Earth911.com blog posted a story today on the plastics industry's role in increasing the sustainable attributes of consumer products, including packaging.

Earth911.com staffer Jennifer Berry called me last week with some general questions about what's new in plastics that consumers can expect to see in coming months. As a result, the blog quotes me a couple of times, along with Fred Roselli, spokesman for Coca-Cola Enterprises.

I'll highlight one of my points here. We chatted about various materials that plastics processors are using to meet customers' sustainability goals -- recycled-content resins and bio-based plastics, for example. I pointed out that processors are sampling a variety of materials now, and they're ready to use whatever customers -- and, ultimately, consumers -- demand.

Here's what I said:

"When I think about plastics processors changing materials, they're flexible. They can shift to what their customers want. They're willing to use recycled content, etc. It all depends on cost[,] performance and if that's what the customer wants."

Ring Container Technologies Inc. has made a big committment to supporting engeering education: a $300,000 gift to establish the Ring Companies Professorship Fund at the Herff College of Engineering at the University of Memphis.

The donation is one of largest gifts in the history of the college.

In making the gift, Carl Ring, chairman of Oakland, Tenn.-based Ring Container and Rapac LP, lauded the college as an asset to the Memphis community.

"For many years, we at Ring Companies have worked with its faculty and students and have found them to be highly skilled and among the best we've dealt with in the nation. I hope this endowment will support the college in its continued pursuit of excellence, and will allow us to say thank you to a group that highly deserves it," he said.

The professorships will recognize outstanding faculty in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering for their exceptional classroom instruction and scholarly contributions to the field of engineering. Recipients will be appointed for three years.

"The generosity of Ring in providing this support for the Herff College of Engineering is truly a transformative gift," said Dean Richard Warder. "It will enable us to make significant progress in our efforts to attract and retain the outstanding faculty whose instruction and research provide our University of Memphis engineering students with a competitive advantage in the global marketplace."

I've never heard of Milly Zantow before, but according to the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wis., the 86-year-old was a pioneer of post-consumer plastics recycling in the United States.

In a story posted Jan. 17, and a related video, Zantow tells how she and her friend Jenny Ehl "cashed in their life insurance policies, bought a commercial plastics grinder for $5,000 and started E-Z Recycling, what some believe was the first business of its kind in the country."

That was in 1979.

Zantow got the idea after a visit to Japan in 1978, where she saw plastics being recycled. She wondered why there were no such companies, or recycling infrastructure, in the United States.

Plastics packaging was just beginning to take off. Remember, this was before plastic bottles even had resin codes to help identify the material.

Zantow knew nothing about plastics, but she soon became an expert. She called processors in Wisconsin and discovered that they already recycled their in-house scrap.

According to the story, Zantow deserves at least partial credit for coming up with the idea for a bottle recycling code:

Zantow wanted to come up with a simple system to classify plastics, and that led to the development of the number code that identifies the polymer type.

At the urging of recyclers such as Zantow across the country, the Society of the Plastics Industry developed the numbered codes in 1988, said Tisha Petteway, a spokeswoman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. They allow recyclers to divert the different types of plastic to specific recycling streams and now are used around the world.

Zantow didn't stay in the plastics recycling business for long. She told the State Journal that the business "never made a nickel" in the few years she ran it, and she sold it in 1982 to a Milwaukee company that folded in 1984.

It's an interesting story and video, definitely worth a look for Plastics Blog readers interested in recycling.

For the record, though, I'd like to stress that plastics recycling absolutely dates back before Zantow and E-Z Recycling, even in Wisconsin.

One such pioneer was Irv Vincent, founder of N.E.W. Plastics Corp. in Luxemburg, Wis.

Vincent founded N.E.W., a blow molder, in 1968. He branched into plastics recycling in the early 1970s, according to a profile that Plastics News published in 2003.

Who was the first plastics recycler? That's hard to say. But pioneers like Vincent and Zantow deserve credit for helping to create a sector of the plastics industry that today the entire industry depends on to buttress its sustainability claims.

I get a kick out of the plastics-related articles on The Onion's Web site. There's a new one today, in the lead story spot, "'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder"

This story doesn't really aim its satire at the plastics industry. The target is the public, specifically people who don't make the effort to recycle PET water bottles.

According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around with them, the time that could be saved by just tossing it out right here, and the fact that they had bicycled to work once last July.

In addition, pretty much the entire states of Missouri and New Mexico calmly reassured themselves Monday that they definitely knew better than to do something like this, but admitted that hey, nobody is perfect, and at least they weren't still using those horrible aerosol cans, or just throwing garbage directly on the ground.

All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of thermoplastic polymer resin wasn't the end of the world.

"It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over."

It's evident that someone at The Onion knows a little bit about plastics -- or at least they think plastics are funny enough to merit attention. Remember the tongue-in-cheek story last year about the paper being sold to a Chinese injection molder?

Reminding readers that they should recycle PET is a good thing, and using humor might be a very effective way to get people to pay attention. Keep up the good work, Onion staffers.

Some readers might have wondered, why did Brownsville, Texas, become the 12th U.S. city to ban single-use plastic grocery bags? Most bag bans have been in California, or on the coasts.

But Brownsville is also home to a big Duro Bag Manufacturing Co. plant. The plant employs 120 and makes about 9 million paper bags a day.

This story from The Brownsville Herald points out that Duro -- which touts itself as the world's No. 1 paper bag maker -- considers the plastic bag ban to be good news.

"We're hoping for the good of the community, for the good of the people and the environment," plant manager Carlos Villarreal told the newspaper.

The story, headlined "Local company may benefit from plastic bag ban," points out that the plant used to employ 250, but business took a hit when groceries switched to plastic bags.

A plastic bag ban in Brownsville isn't going to bring back all those jobs at Duro. But it is noteworthy that Brownsville is joining the bag ban parade.

Unlike Brownsville, however, most communities that are banning or taxing single-use bags are urging residents to use reusable bags instead -- not simply switching from plastic to paper.

The Iowa Grocery Industry Association, aware of battles over single-use bag taxes and bans around the country, is taking a proactive approach with a new program to make customers aware of plastic bag recycling opportunities.

The Build with Bags program has four goals:

1. Double the amount of plastic bags recycled over a 24-month period;
2. Reduce consumption of plastic bags;
3. Increase use of reusable bags; and
4. Encourage purchases of furniture and equipment made from recycled plastic through a grant program for parks and schools.

The program offers "a meaningful alternative to the banning of plastic bags, a practice that has been shown to have a number of negative unintended consequences," according to the project's Web site.

Customers are getting their first look at the program in local grocery stores this week, with a two weeks of promotions that will run statewide.

Stores are handing out bags that highlight the program, and they're also placing Build with Bags posters in the entry ways of stores near plastic bag recycling barrels.

Build with Bags is supported by the Iowa Grocery Industry Association, Keep Iowa Beautiful, Metro Waste Authority in Des Moines, Iowa Department of Natural Resources and The Des Moines Register.

US Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, paid a visit to plastic tube maker Essel Propack Ltd.'s plant in Danville, Va., on Jan. 11. He took the opportunity to talk up a bill that he says would help bring jobs to the United States.

This story from Media General News Service explains that Warner's bill is aimed at making economically distressed areas more competitive internationally.

Perhaps some Plastics Blog readers will consider it ironic that the Senator visited a plant with a parent in Mumbai, India, to talk about making US manufacturing globally competitive.

But it seems that Warner gets it. He helped recruit Essel Propack when he was governor of Virginia. He knows that manufacturers can set up shop anywhere, and his aim is to help them choose the United States.

Warner's not up for re-election this year. But with the mid-term elections set for November, we can expect to see more visitors from Capitol Hill in plastics plants in the next few months.

I hope more companies like Essel Propack volunteer to host visits like this. It's a good opportunity to raise the profile of the industry and to get out the word that manufacturing still plays an important role in the US economy.

Here's an unusual story: the chairman of a plastics trade show is suggesting that any film extruder that breaks a law in India and makes plastic bags less than 20 microns thick should go to jail.

Jigish Doshi, chairman of the Plexpo India 2010, told reporters that the plastics industry in India "will support a government initiative for a consensus on providing a jail term for such law violators."

"We would like to assure the authorities that the associations of plastic manufacturers themselves would help the authorities to identify such errant manufacturers and put them behind the bar," Doshi said. According to the report, he added that plastic manufacturers are "equally concerned about the environment as anyone else."

Sounds harsh, certainly. Here's a guy who knows how to make a promise!

Coca-Cola's new PlantBottle -- a PET bottle made in-part from plant feedstocks -- is about to hit the store shelves. Scott Vitters, Coke's global head of sustainable packaging, gave an interview about the material to Marc Gunther, a senior writer for GreenBiz.com.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• The PET resin in the bottles is made from 30 percent plant-based material, and Coke's R&D teams are to make the remaining 70 percent from renewable sources, too.
• The material currently is made from sugar cane and molasses, a byproduct of the sugar production process, from Brazil. Vitters said the material is "not perfect, but the commitment from the Brazilian government, the growers down there ... enabled us to be able to get started with this process, as we look toward a long-term vision of using plant waste material."
• The company has proven in the lab that it is technically feasible to make bottles from 100 percent plant-based resin.
• The PlantBottle resin costs more than conventional PET, but for now the company is not charging customers a premium price. Eventually, the company expects to bring down the cost of the plant-based resin.

Vitters put it this way:

" It's largely driven because of an unoptimized supply chain. ... Long term though, we believe we can drive that price down through improving the supply chain, as well as ongoing work to look at plant waste materials, and increasing our use of recycled materials."

Littering has decreased by 61 percent in America during the past 40 years, but the amount of plastic litter is actually up 165.4 percent, according to a study released today by Keep America Beautiful Inc.

Is it any wonder that there's public pressure to ban or tax plastic bags and polystyrene foodservice products, and to place deposits on PET water bottles and other beverage containers?

KAB touts the new study as the largest litter study ever conducted in the U.S., and the first major national survey of litter in the U.S. in 40 years.

Despite the perception that plastic is the top litter problem, the study found that it is actually No. 3. Tobacco products are the biggest problem, accounting for 37.7 percent of all litter, and paper products are No. 2 at 21.9 percent.

Plastic accounts for 19.3 percent of litter, followed by metal at 5.8 percent and glass at 4.5 percent.

But the big problem is that plastics' share of the litter pie has exploded.

Since 1969, paper litter has dropped 78.9 percent; metal litter is down 88.2 percent, glass is down 86.4 percent -- but plastic is up 165.4 percent.

There's a good explanation for the increase, of course -- the amount of plastic packaging used in the U.S. over the past 40 years has skyrocketed (up 340 percent per capita). Much of the gains by plastics have been at the expense of metal, glass and paper packaging.

So, naturally, researchers are going to find more plastic in litter today than in 1969.

Some more highlights from the report:

• Litter conservatively costs our nation $11.5 billion per year. These are direct costs, including cleanup and prevention programs.
• There are also major indirect costs: including decreased commerce, tourism, and health effects. A significant problem: decreased property values. 93 percent of homeowners, 55 percent of real estate agents and 90 percent of property appraisers said a littered neighborhood would decrease their assessment of a home's value.
• The study said there are at least 51.2 billion pieces of litter on roadways in the U.S.; an average of 6,729 pieces of litter per mile.

The study concludes that education and cleanups work, as does investing in trash receptacles.

It called for boosting the nation's recycling infrastructure (only 12 percent of public spaces surveyed had recycling receptacles), and funding is needed for education programs, volunteer programs and infrastructure.

What's new and interesting in plastics packaging? DuPont Co. is on the lookout once again -- the company today issued a call for entries for its 22nd annual DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation.

The awards are pretty big in the packaging sector -- DuPont touts them as the industry's longest running, independently judged competition.

As you'd expect, sustainability is an important criteria this year. The company also is looking for products that are innovative, and packaging that helps customers (and consumers) reduce cost and waste, according to Carolann Haznedar, global business director for DuPont Packaging.

Entry forms and guidelines are available at www.packaging.dupont.com.The deadline for entries is Feb. 12. There's no fee for entry, and DuPont materials do not need to be in the packaging structure.

Crates and pallets used to transport soda bottles and milk are apparently popular with some thieves, but the legal authorities in Maryland are on the case.

According to several reports today that are very likely to be picked up in other news media, Prince Georges County State's Attorney Glenn Ivey and representatives from a Coca-Cola bottler and a Baltimore bakery today announced the indictment of five people suspected of stealing the containers from retail and industrial businesses.

Allegations of milk crate banditry aren't new -- I had a similar blog post back in 2007.

Just like the last time, the authorities in Maryland say the alleged thieves were selling the pallets and containers to overseas recyclers, who grind them and use the plastic to make new products.

The authorities claim that nearly $10 million in losses from plastic pallet theft have occurred in Maryland in the past year.

Really? $10 million in stolen plastic pallets? Sold to apparently unsavory overseas recyclers?

This just sounds too much like a bad script for "CSI New York."

Recycling foodservice polystyrene products offers some unique challenges. The light weight of the PS foam is one of the biggest stumbling blocks, and so is contamination.

I remember interviewing the some leaders of the now-defunct National Polystyrene Recycling Corp. back in 1992. One told me that NPRC had spent $60 million between 1988 and 1992 to set up and promote its PS recycling infrastructure, and yet it had only managed to recycle about 35 million pounds of material.

Not exactly a great return on investment.

So I'm not surprised to see this story from the Oakland Tribune today, reporting that GB Industrial Materials Corp., the only company in the Fremont-Union City area to collect plastic foam for recycling, will no longer allow people to make drop-offs at its Union City plant.

"People leave all the garbage bags in our parking lot and on weekends. Many times we come in in the morning and are like, 'What is that?,'" owner Christina Liu told the newspaper. "We are short-handed. This is very labor-intensive work."

GBIM Corp. specializes in importing and exporting thermoplastics, including both virgin and recycled material.

The company wasn't alone -- the story points out that other companies that recycle PS foam are in Oakland, Redwood City and Stockton. Plastics News has written stories about successful PS recycling programs, as has our sister newspaper Waste & Recycling News. (Here are a few).

But with PS bans spreading across California (24 California towns and two counties have banned PS takeout packaging), the news that a drop-off program in one community is scaling back is bad news for the foodservice packaging sector.

Are you interested in what Procter & Gamble Co. considers sustainable? The Cincinnati-based consumer products giant released its 2009 sustainability overview this week.

The document touches on plastics in several places -- in both positive and negative lights.

For P&G, much of the emphasis is on creating and marketing products that have a reduced environmental impact. According to the company, it has achieved $13.1 billion in sales since 2007 in "products with a significantly reduced environmental impact." One that gets a lot of ink in the report is Ariel Excel Gel, a highly concentrated, low-temperature laundry detergent introduced in Western Europe. Because it is created for consumers to wash clothes in cold water, much of the sustainable benefit comes through energy savings -- assuming that consumers really do use the detergent in cold water.

Because the product is concentrated, there's a plastics angle. It uses 14-45 percent less packaging:

The next-generation formula uses only ingredients that add value to the cleaning performance, adding no thickeners, solvents, or stabilizers. Thanks to a breakthrough formulation that forms a gel naturally, the product's easy-squeeze consistency is achieved without the need for any structuring agents. This makes it possible to handle the same number of loads in a highly concentrated formula, leading to a dramatic reduction in packaging.

Ariel also uses plastics to reduce transport packaging by 80 percent:

One example of our systemic approach involves an advance by P&G teams in Turkey. By replacing cardboard shipping boxes on Ariel with seal-tight plastic bags, they found a way to use significantly less material while delivering a superior product to market. Previously, shipping Ariel involved packing eight bags of Ariel granule detergent into a corrugated box. The team designed a new process that packed Ariel in large, sealtight polyethylene bags. Entirely recyclable, these bags require 80% less packaging material than boxes, and can be opened without tools. They also take up 20% less space during transport and storage and help speed up the packaging line.

For our retail customers, the new outer covering provides still more value. It allows for easier stock management, with the transparent film showing the product inside for
faster recognition of brands and sizes. Because the packaging can be opened without tools, it is easier to handle. And it maximizes shelf space, helping reduce out-of-stock situations.

The success of this packaging advance has inspired its expansion beyond Turkey. The new process is currently being reapplied across multiple regions, with three more plants scheduled to be up and running by early next year.

The report also mentions that P&G is replacing plastic with recycled-content corrugate in its in-store displays.

For more details, here's a link directly to P&G's 26-page sustainability overview (PDF warning). The company notes that the full report is coming soon.

Remember how San Francisco banned plastic bags? Now Board of Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is after paper bags, too.

Mirkarimi, the author of the city's plastic bag ban, introduced legislation yesterday that would require stores to offer a 10-cent rebate to people who bring their own bags.

"I believe we now need to tackle paper bags," Mirkarimi told the San Francisco Chronicle. "So when the question is asked, paper or plastic, the answer is neither."

His proposed ordinance would fine large retailers up to $500 if they failed to provide the rebate.

Our sister newspaper Crain's Detroit Business has a popular feature called "Forty under forty," where each year it profiles 40 up-and-coming stars in southeast Michigan's business community.

Among the best and the brightest being honored this year: Angela Davison, associate general counsel for packaging blow molder Amcor PET Packaging USA Inc.

Davison's story isn't typical for this year's class, but it is one of the best. Here's a taste:

While growing up on the west side of Chicago, Davison moved more than 20 times because her parents couldn't maintain steady jobs and were frequently evicted. When her parents lost custody of their kids, Davison spent several years homeless while finishing high school....

[At Amcor PET,] Davison has engineered contracts with customers including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Campbell Soup Co., Kraft Foods Inc. and Unilever. Soon after becoming associate general counsel, Davison closed a three-year, $100 million beverage company contract that had been mired in negotiations for about 18 months. The client, which Davison said she could not disclose, had continued operating under a previous contract while attorneys worked out issues such as pricing and volume commitments.

The success at Amcor has provided stability Davison couldn't dream of as a child.

When her brother was placed in a foster home about 70 miles away, Davison dodged child services officials and stayed in Chicago. In high school, she slept in various places so she could continue studying. She achieved a full college scholarship at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

After earning her law degree and working as a patent attorney, she landed at Amcor.

Davison hopes to join the board of directors of the Sterling, Va.-based Orphan Foundation of America, for which she volunteers as a legal adviser and mentor to teenagers.

"There's a little something special that I add because I can say, 'Look, I was there too. I know how hard it is, but it can be done.'"

As you can see, this is quite an inspiring story. Congratulations to Davison for being honored in Crain's 19th annual "Forty under forty" list today.

Congratulations to material supplier Lubrizol Corp. and packaging injection molder Weatherchem Corp., which were recently named to the NorthCoast 99 "Great Places to Work" in northeast Ohio.

The NorthCoast 99 is given annually to employers that have an "exceptional commitment to creating positive, supportive workplaces that recruit and retain top talent." The awards are sponsored by the Employers Resource Council.

Among other things, Weatherchem was honored for "improving energy efficiency and environmental sustainability -- Weatherchem strives to be a more environmentally sustainable company, with such methods as using new energy efficient presses and chillers, a company-wide recycling program, and focusing on ways to reduce scrap material and waste."

The Debtwire news service has an interesting report today that speculates on how private equity firm Apollo Management could be about to cash in on its investments in Pliant Corp. and Berry Plastics Corp.

Apollo Management has sunk at least $1 billion into the two companies since 2005, according to the report. "As the global recession squeezed sector demand and commodity fluctuations whiplashed costs, the challenges for the private equity firm to make good on both investments grew steeper.

"But Pliant's imminent exit from bankruptcy sets the stage for a merger of the two portfolio companies and, if all goes well, an IPO that could land Apollo a turnaround windfall."

The story, attributed to four unnamed sources, goes on to speculate about the potential value of Pliant and Berry, assuming the economy improves, the companies hit their profit targets, and they successfully complete an initial public offering.

Interesting stuff. Plastics company IPOs have been few and far between the past few years. Plastics News tracks publicly traded processors, and the fact is that we've lost more publicly trade companies (some to private equity, some to bankruptcy) than we've gained.

Perhaps Berry will be the first of a new wave of publicly traded plastics packaging companies. Are investors ready?

German thermoformer and injection molder Pöppelmann Holding GmbH & Co. KG found a way to make its 60th anniversary a memorable experience for its employees.

The company helped pick up the tab for more than 2,000 employees and their guests to attend a celebration in Rome earlier this month.

Workers came from company locations in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Denmark.

This story from The Hickory Daily Record in Hickory, N.C. -- near Pöppelmann's U.S. thermoforming plant in Claremont -- notes that Pöppelmann "picked up nearly all of the tab. Employees in Claremont paid $100 each for the trip, while spouses and other guests paid $200 each."

Especially in this economy -- with so many companies restricting business travel -- Pöppelmann gesture seems incredibly generous.

Critics of taxes on plastic bags may argue that they have no environmental benefit, but that's not stopping Ireland's environment minister.

John Gormley said Sept. 23 that he will introduce a bill later this year that would double Ireland's tax on single-use plastic bags to 0.44 euros (59 U.S. cents).

According to this report, Gormley spoke at an environmental conference in Dublin, where he said the tax initially was met with resistance, but now has proved "hugely popular."

A spokesman for the minister said raising the tax will "ensure that there's a sufficient deterrent against people moving back to plastic bags."

Ireland was a pioneer in taxing plastic bags. It originally put a 0.15 euro tax on bags in March 2002.

Opponents of bag taxes had better bone up on reasons why taxes are a bad idea. (The American Chemistry Council has a list here).

Because once politicans settle on something that they can tax -- especially if they think the tax will actually be popular -- you can be sure that they'll keep going back to that well.

William Binnie, founder of Carlisle Plastics Inc. -- once a major film extruder, blow molder and injection molder -- is exploring a run for the U.S. Senate, according to this story from Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover, N.H.

Binnie is considering running for the Republican nomination, according to the report. The seat is being vacated by former Gov. Judd Gregg, who joined the Senate in 1993.

Binnie didn't have much to say. It's "premature to discuss anything" about the run, he told the newspaper.

Carlisle was a publicly traded company that was a major manufacturer of film and sheet -- including trash bags -- plus injection molded coat hangers, blow molded milk bottles, and other products.

Tyco International Ltd. bought the company in 1996 for $130 million.

Today Binnie runs Carlisle Capital Corp., a real estate investment and advisory firm, according to the report. He told the Daily Democrat that he rose from "humble beginnings," moving to the United States from Scotland with his family at age 5.

"The son of a janitor, he worked as a mechanic to pay his way through two Harvard degrees," the story notes.

Binnie has never run for public office, and he faces opposition in the primary.

A couple of Hall of Famers -- one from plastics, one from the NFL -- are part of a new private equity firm that is on the hunt for middle-market leveraged buyouts.

Jon Huntsman Sr., the founder and former chairman of Huntsman Corp., is the plastics guy. The football Hall of Famer is former San Francisco 49er Steve Young. Also on the team is Robert C. Gay, the former managing director of private equity player Bain Capital. The name of the new firm is Huntsman Gay Global Capital LLC.

According to this San Jose Mercury News story, Huntsman Gay has $1.1 billion that it plans to invest in companies in companies with $20 million to $100 million in annual sales.

This information kit from the company (PDF) adds that the fund will look primarily in the United States for buyouts, and will "continue to follow the proven methodologies of the Huntsman Corp. and Bain Capital."

Neither the Mercury News story nor the Huntsman Gay Web site mention plastics as a specific target for the new firm. But both Huntsman and Bain have been players in the world of plastics M&A. So it wouldn't be a big stretch to assume that the new firm will eventually end up with some polymer-related assets.

Abbott Laboratories is on its way toward a goal of cutting the packaging used in its key products by 5 percent by 2013. Yesterday the Abbott Park, Ill., company gave a progress report on its sustainable packaging efforts.

Abbott said it is implementing more than 40 sustainable packaging initiatives, which emphasize "use of lighter and sustainable materials in package design."

Based on that definition, it's no surprise that plastics are playing an important role.

The company cited one example: its Abbott Nutrition unit reduced the amount of plastic in its 8-ounce re-closable bottles by 8.3 percent.

"Through better design, the company cut polypropylene plastic usage by 2.7 million pounds annually. The reduced-weight bottles also will help save 436,000 gallons of gasoline used for transportation per year," the company said.

Abbott said since 2007, it has eliminated an estimated 2.88 million pounds of packaging on an annualized basis, the equivalent of preventing 15,000 pounds of polystyrene foam from going into landfills.

If you're interested in plastic pallets, the September print issue of Modern Materials Handling is worth a look. The magazine carries an extensive feature on the pallet industry in which the growth of plastic pallets is highlighted.

The story notes that plastic "still represent a small slice of the total pallet market -- with wood comprising more than 90 percent of market share -- they've been steadily growing in use over the last few years."

One driver: Wal-Mart's Sustainable Product Initiative.

"The Material Handling Industry has stated that the plastic pallet market has doubled in size over the last 10 years," Margot Beesley, a spokeswoman for Buckhorn Inc. told the magazine. "As companies are trying to be more eco-friendly, the reusable nature of plastic pallets makes them more attractive."

Thanks to Roger Renstrom, our West Coast correspondent, for pointing out this coverage.

Lisa Kaas Boyle, co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and a board chair at Heal the Bay, contributed a column that blasts the plastics industry today on HuffingtonPost.com.

The post, titled "Recycling Plastic: What a Waste," ties together a couple of issues -- concerns about chemicals including bisphenol A and phthalates, and litter-related issues including marine debris.

I thought it was worth sharing the column so Plastics Blog readers can see what she thinks of industry efforts to fight plastic bans and taxes by pushing for more recycling:

The [American Chemistry Council] spends millions to defend the chemicals produced by their members to make plastics. They have hired the same advisors who defended the tobacco industry to formulate a strategy to promote and defend the petrochemical industry. If measured by the difficulty in passing legislation to curtail SUPs [single-use plastics], and the positive press generated on the issue of plastic recycling, the strategy seems to be working.

At the center of ACC's strategy is its promotion of recycling as the solution to plastic pollution. This band-aid approach allows the industry to look environmental while continuing with business as usual, making SUPs out of virgin -- not recycled -- petrochemicals. The ACC knows well that only 5-7 percent of plastics are recycled, and that this figure will probably not grow substantially.

However, SUPs, the majority of plastics, are not designed to be recycled. Instead, SUPs are designed and promoted to be used on the go, and to be dumped whenever and wherever their contents are consumed. Even if SUPs are discarded into a recycling container, they are often contaminated by food waste and rendered unsuitable for recycling, or made of a type of plastic that have no recycling infrastructure. Spending relatively little on promoting recycling plastics offers a big public relations payoff with no real threat to an industry that earns billions pushing SUPs as the foundation of our throw-away consumer culture.

The ACC also knows that even if more plastics are recycled, there is not a big market for recycled plastic. It is usually cheaper for manufacturers to use virgin petrochemical material. Furthermore, the downgraded recycled by-product is routinely sent overseas to China, where it may also end up in a dump or incinerated, after the most recyclable fraction is "cherry picked" out. In short, recycling will never put the ACC members out of business.

Boyle calls ACC's effort a "cynical strategy." Her description sounds awfully cynical to me. There is a big, healthy market for recycled plastics (North American recyclers often complain that they can't get enough raw material). Recycled plastics are rarely more expensive than virgin resin.

I agree that recycling won't put ACC members out of business -- but is that really the goal? There's a place for virgin resin, and a place for recycled resin. Often the materials compete. Sometimes I'm frustrated when I see virgin resin win markets that seem natural for recycled plastics. But that's a matter of consumer preference, not chemical industry conspiracies.

Boyle didn't say this, but I will -- some industry-sponsored efforts to boost recycling have been too weak. But the plastics industry doesn't deserve all of the blame for standing in the way of good ideas like bottle deposits. Grocers, soft-drink companies and water bottlers have been the roadblocks.

That's another column ... but perhaps it's time for ACC and others in the industry to realize that plastics will continue to shoulder the blame for litter and marine debris problems because the plastics industry hasn't done enough to push its customers to take more responsibility for single-use disposables.

The column concludes by urging readers to refuse to use single-use plastics. Boyle writes: "Instead, bring your own shopping and produce bags to the market. Use reusable bottles. Bring your own containers for take-out or ask for non-plastic disposable packaging."

Nothing wrong with that. In fact, some consumers seem to be catching on to the "use less stuff" lifestyle -- just check the latest trends in bottled water sales for proof.

The Providence, R.I., Business News posted a long story on Saturday about Rhode Island companies that are worried about a proposed hike in energy rates. The feature focused on Polytop Corp., a closure injection molder in Slatersville, and Toray Plastics (America) Inc., a film extruder in North Kingstown.

According to the story, the proposed hike in electricity distribution costs would cost Toray $586,735 a year.

Shigeru Osada, Toray's senior vice president for engineering the maintenance, told the PBN that the company's plant in Virginia pays about 4 cents a kilowatt-hour for electricity. In Rhode Island, it pays about 3 cents just for distribution, and 6 to 12 cents when the price of electricity is factored in.

When the economy rebounds, Osada told the paper, there will be "a discussion about expanding in the future, but definitely not here."

Say what you want about communities and legislatures with anti-plastics biases, but many states would love to have companies like Toray and Polytop in the fold.

If Rhode Island can't find a way to accommodate these companies, get ready for the blame game and lots of finger-pointing, if the companies choose to invest to expand in other states.

Project Kaisei, one of this summer's missions to study the plastics vortex in the Pacific Ocean, is on the way back to California.

Dennis Rogers, a marine educator who has been blogging from the trip, notes that he saw "exactly what I expected to see: the plastic was about in the concentration that credible media had reported."

He continues:

I've seen beautiful sunrises give light to shocking areas of plastic accumulation, held handfuls of plastic particles filtered from the surface of the ocean, and shared the simple joy of sailing while storytelling with ocean enthusiasts from around the world. You do not need to sail to the middle of the Pacific to know what to do about plastic in our oceans, in our streams, and on our shores, but sailing to it makes the message even more compelling.

Most people reading this blog know the personal solution already; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Many of us have found new ways to live with less stuff; how to make things last; and how to properly dispose of what we use. If you have done this, you know that we are all works in progress and that it's only with constant attention to details that one can succeed. On the other hand, how do you make a whole culture pay constant attention? It seems that, while we've been chanting, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," somehow our throwaway culture has marched forward unaware.

I share his frustration, and I'm sure many Plastics Blog readers do, too. As I've pointed out before, many people in the plastics industry consider themselves to be environmentalists. They may have a bias toward plastic products, but that's understandable. Plastics offer many advantages to the sustainably minded: energy efficiency and light weight (which saves on transportation costs) are in the forefront, but so is recyclability.

But now there's so much plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean that, in a single summer, we have multiple scientific missions exploring the problem. Something must be done to get more people to change their behavior. They've got to start to recycle, or at least properly dispose of plastic waste. If they don't, the problem will keep getting worse, and the industry will face more solutions that it finds distasteful -- bans and taxes.

So the question is, how best to change human behavior, and discourage the throwaway culture that Rogers laments? I hope his voyage helps, and I applaud him for focusing attention on the problem.

John Russell of the Indianapolis Star has an interesting story today about a dispute between an inventor and a plastics product manufacturer.

Gary Hopkins is the Scottsburg, Ind, inventor who claims he developed plastic containers designed to steam-cook food in the microwave, without a need for rotating the container.

But now he's in court with Birds Eye Foods and Clorox Co., parent of GladWare food containers. Hopkins claims they are using his designs.

The companies deny the allegations, and perhaps the court or a jury will eventually decide this case. It's an interesting problem that, as Russell's story explains, happens a lot.

"It's a big risk when inventors show their inventions to big companies," patent attorney Lynn Tyler told the Star. "I've seen cases where big companies settle before it ever gets to trial, because they don't want the publicity or embarrassment. And I've seen cases where little inventors have big egos, but their cases have no merit."

I guess it goes to show that intellectual property disputes aren't exclusive to companies that do business in China.

By now you've heard that Seattle voters defeated the proposed 20-cent tax on plastic and paper grocery bags.

How did that happen?

Some pundits seem to think it a case of the American Chemistry Council throwing a million dollars in advertising at the city and duping the voters.

Others say it was an ill-conceived proposal that voters -- even in Seattle, a city with a reputation for support for environmental causes -- couldn't stomach.

I thought it would be fun to share some opinions from a variety of sources:

Frankly, Seattle, a plastic bag fee is a no-brainer, and it is proven to work. The cost is low enough to be a nominal dent in your wallet, and the fee can simply and easily be avoided with a few reusable bags. The arguments against it--the cost, the "wrong approach," fear of misused funds--just seem flimsy.

There are some things Europe just does better, and sometimes this has to do with perceived "rights." Americans believe they have a right to a free bag. Here, when it comes to the environment--be it car emissions, closing the center of a city to traffic, or plastic bags--the laws are just passed. Because these small changes are for the greater good.

Mairi Beautyman
The Huffington Post

It was a costly and unnecessary tax. ... I think you saw Seattle voters saying this was not the right approach to protecting our environment.

Adam Parmer of the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax
From The Seattle Times

Residents clearly expressed that a tax was not the way to go. The message it sends to us is that consumers value plastic bags and have rejected the idea of paying a fee for something they value and already use responsibly.

Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council
from Plastics News

It wasn't the American Chemistry Council but the stable poor and newly unemployed taking an unsustainable hit in the current economic downturn who decided this was one tax/fee too many. What used to be chump change now gets us through the day. The mayor and his advisors targeted hapless users of the reusable plastic and paper totes instead of requiring manufacturers of toxic carryalls to come up with an eco-friendly product. The mayor hoist himself on his own petard by his arrogant disdain for the people with no voice. He never stepped up to the plate in defense of Jane and John Doe paying increasingly higher costs of food, rent and public transportation, failure to oversee due maintence of the infrastructure and suffering massive job losses. He dessicrated entire neighborhoods by confiscating private properties for a monorail that never was and ignored the voters who trekked to the polls four times to support the project. It's time the grinch who stole Christmas exit the stage gracefully.

Post by gladys on SeattlePI.com

I didn't see much of a campaign myself [in favor of the proposal]. And when it became visible, it was whining about the petrochemical industry. It seems like at the end, it was more about who was opposing it than dealing with some of the issues raised.

Political consultant Blair Butterworth
from The Seattle Times

Nanny legislation, in all forms and at all levels, is a pernicious evil and must be eliminated.

It is not the government's responsibility to manage the lives of its citizens. If I choose to use canvas bags, or if a grocer opts not to offer plastic/paper, that is my (or their) choice.

Although this may be an important societal issue, I see no reason to codify it in law. Not everything has to be a law.

firebringer11, Kent, Wash.
from The Seattle Times

I count this as a win for the big, polluting plastic and chemical companies. All this claptrap about hurting the poor is a ridiculous argument. If you're poor, how many bags full of groceries are you going to be buying in the first place? Even if you have five bags, that's an extra buck. Big deal.

I don't know why the city council didn't just ban plastic bags and leave it at that. They overplayed their hand by putting the fee on paper, too. Paper is at least a renewable resource, and it's much less environmentally destructive.

Oh, well. We use canvas bags anyway. I'm just sorry to see the outcome of this vote.

amr71, Alexandria, Va.
from The Seattle Times

See anything you agree with? Disagree? Here's your chance to be a political pundit.

All along we've been reading about how plastic marine debris will float in the ocean for centuries, killing wildlife and causing havoc.

Now the latest problem is that the plastic won't last forever -- it's degrading faster than scientists expect, and the chemicals being left behind will kill more wildife and cause more havoc.

The news comes from a widely-covered speech by Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, who led a team of scientists that looked at the marine debris problem. Saido spoke this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington.

According to a report from National Geographic News, the team collected ocean water samples from around the world and found that they all contained derivatives of polystyrene.

The toxic compounds the team found don't occur naturally in the ocean, and the researchers thought plastic was the culprit.

The scientists later simulated the decomposition of polystyrene in the sea and found that it degraded at temperatures of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius).

Left behind in the water were the same compounds detected in the ocean samples, such as styrene trimer, a polystyrene by-product, and bisphenol A, a chemical used in hard plastics such as reusable water bottles and the linings of aluminum cans.

The National Geographic News version of the story is one of the more complete that I've seen. It notes that water temperatures in much of the ocean are much cooler than 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

A few weeks ago, if someone had told me that scientists had discovered that plastic marine debris was breaking down in the ocean, I would have thought that was good news.

Apparently I would have been wrong.

Really, the best solution to this problem is to stop creating marine debris in the first place -- and to work toward a solution to clean up what's already out there.

In an apparent landslide, voters in Seattle are rejecting a 20-cent-per-bag tax on plastic and paper grocery bags today.

The Seattle Times took a look at the early returns and pronounced that the referendum and pronounced that it "was being resoundingly defeated."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted that as of 8:20 p.m. local time, the "no" votes were leading 58 percent to 42 percent.

The PI report also quotes pollster Stuart Elway saying that "Seattleites certainly have demonstrated a willingness to raise their own taxes for a variety of programs they deemed worthy. Plus, Seattle and the Northwest people generally want to do their part to help save the environment. So I think the question is whether voters think this measure is really going to do enough to help solve a real problem vs. the amount and impact of this tax."

Looks like a victory for the American Chemistry Council and its Progressive Bag Affiliates group, which lobbied hard against the bag tax.

Anna Lenzer of muckraking news organization Mother Jones has an interesting feature on Fiji Water Co. LLC, as part of a special report it has dubbed "Spin the Bottle."

Plastic is only part of the story -- the feature also looks at the company's role in Fiji's economy, the health of its residents and the company's environmental performance compared to its marketing message.

There's some drama, too: Lenzer reports that at one point during her visit to Fiji, police took her in for questioning. Apparently the authories were monitoring emails she was writing during her trip.

Here's a bit of what she has to say about the company's iconic square-shaped PET bottles:

Nowhere in Fiji Water's glossy marketing materials will you find reference to the typhoid outbreaks that plague Fijians because of the island's faulty water supplies; the corporate entities that Fiji Water has -- despite the owners' talk of financial transparency -- set up in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg; or the fact that its signature bottle is made from Chinese plastic in a diesel-fueled plant and hauled thousands of miles to its ecoconscious consumers.

The Huffington Post took note of the story today, and is planning a live discussion on Aug. 17 that will bring together bottled water experts, industry representatives and critics.

Remember a few months ago, when the trade group for wood pallet makers charged that plastic pallets are a fire hazard?

The war of words is continuing today, with a company that provides a pool of all-plastic pallets calling on the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to "launch a comprehensive investigation of wood pallets and the risks they may pose to the nation's food supply."

"Wood pallets may present a serious risk to America's food supply. The over 1 billion wood pallets in circulation in the U.S. are a breeding ground for harmful bacteria and carry other undesirable substances that can cross-contaminate food," said Bob Moore, chairman and CEO, of Intelligent Global Pooling Systems Co. LLC in Orlando, Fla.

"Wood is inherently porous and can easily absorb bacteria and fluids, creating a risk for food products where Listeria, E. coli and salmonella are a concern," he said.

Moore pointed out other issues with wood pallets -- but nothing really new, since plastic pallet makers have been making this case against wood for years.

One thing is clear -- there's some bad blood between the wood and plastic pallet sectors.

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" is doing a series this month called "How green Is It?," which is taking a closer look at things Americans are doing because they believe they help the environment.

On Friday, the focus was on reusable bags, which some grocery chains -- and some communities -- are encouraging shoppers to use instead of the traditional paper or plastic.

To start, environmental consultant Catherine Greener points out the differences among reusable bags.

Last year, Wal-Mart started selling a black bag that was made entirely from recycled bottles. Now, it offers a cheaper blue bag that is thinner and uses less plastic. On the other hand, however, only a third of the plastic in the new blue bag is recycled. And, it lasts only about half as long as the black one.

"I think we are living in the land of confusion right now as we migrate through what is less bad into what is truly good," Greener says. "This is an evolving and a moving target."

That's a problem with lifecycle analysis. In the end, deciding what's best requires some assumptions. What should manufacturers optimize? Carbon footprint? Recyclability? Recycled content? Not everyone is going to agree.

In the end, deciding between paper, plastic and resusable bags isn't going to make a lot of difference for the environment, according to Bob Lilienfeld, editor of the Use Less Stuff report (which touts lifecycle impact studies on its home page).

In the big picture, he says, the big fuss around shopping bags is really just a distraction.

"The bag is not the environmental bogey-person that everybody thinks it is," he says. "If you look at the entire grocery package that you bought, the bag may account for 1 to 2 percent of the environmental impact.

"The other packaging may account for 7 percent. Ninety percent is accounted for by the products you buy. That's where all the environmental impact is."

Thanks to blog reader Andrew Peacock for pointing out the NPR story. He called the report "refreshingly balanced." Let's watch the "How Green Is It?" series for more plastics-related topics.

Video can be an effective way for companies to tell their story to prospective customers, and to the public at large. Here's a video from injection molder Schoeller Arca Systems NV of Vilsteren, the Netherlands, that explains the advantages of the company's plastic pallets.

The report emphasizes a sustainability message, pointing out that plastic pallets are durable, can be reused and, eventually, recycled. Plastics News has written about Schoeller Arca before, but I haven't visited their plant. Seeing the operations on video helped drive home to me what the company does, and the size of its operation.

This video is part of a "Our Planet" series hosted by Greg Gumbel.

The series has been a topic of some controversy, as Gumbel recently sued the producer saying he was tricked into participating in the infomercials.

With the growing use of video on the Web, many plastics companies will be looking at how they can use this tool. Some will hire production companies, and others will try making videos in-house. It's a trend worth exploring -- but make sure to do your homework.

Design blogs are buzzing today with a story about a collapsable milk container called Fresh.

The product, which has been entered in the James Dyson Award for international design, is supposed to keep milk fresher for about a week longer than conventional containers, because the bottle collapses as the milk is used.

Here's an explanation from the award entry form:

Rarely do people question the design of the milk jug, or wonder if there is a way to stop milk from spoiling. My design began when I realized an unopened gallon of milk will last past the expiration date, while an opened gallon can go bad over a week before the date. I believe this happens because as soon as you open a gallon of milk, the jug will trap air inside it along with the milk causing it to spoil. If I can design a milk pitcher that eliminates the milk's contact with air, I believe the milk will stay fresh for quite a few days longer. This could be a large benefit to the singles market of all ages saving them time and money. While large families don't have a problem finishing a gallon of milk before it goes sour, it is nearly impossible for someone living on their own not to throw some of their milk away. Therefore a milk pitcher of some sort must be designed that either vacuum seals or shrinks to keep the air from spoiling the milk.

Alaska is a hotbed of plastic bag bans -- a trend I didn't realize until I read this story from the Anchorage Daily News.

The story, headlined "Tundra trash: Bethel prohibits plastic bags," notes that rural communities including Bethel and Hooper Bay have banned the bags.

In Alaska, bag bans are being driven by litter issues. But they don't seem to have typical litter problems. In these rural towns, citizens dispose of the bags properly. But since they don't have curb-side trash service, the bags are blowing away from unattended neighborhood Dumpsters -- aided by wildlife -- and onto the surrounding tundra or through the town.

In Hooper Bay, the story notes that a federal grant was used to buy reusable canvas bags for every household.

Bethel also is banning polystyrene take-out containers.

These small Alaska towns don't seem like good candidates for plastic bag recycling programs. Is there another alternative that they haven't considered?

According to the Terre Haute, Ind., The Tribune-Star, workers at the Bemis Co. Inc. film plant may go on strike this evening.

Bill Kirby, spokesman for the union, Unite Here Local 1426, said workers overwhelmingly rejected the company's latest contract offer. "The union's bargaining committee gave the company the opportunity to avert a strike by asking them to modify their proposal. The company has not taken advantage of that opportunity," he told the newspaper.

Kirby said workers were prepared to strike. Meanwhile, company spokeswoman Kristine Pavletich told the paper that Bemis has contingency plans "to continue uninterrupted service to customers."

Going on strike in the middle of this recession seems like a risky move for the union.

The Progressive Bag Affiliates unit of the American Chemistry Council is spending $500,000 to fight a referendum that would tax disposable shopping bags.

The money will help pay for radio ads that will begin airing this week, plus Web and direct mail efforts, coordinated by the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax.

This Seattle Times story notes that PBA's contribution is the single-largest for a local ballot-measure in recent history, according to Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

The vote on the referendum is scheduled for Aug. 18.

It will be interesting to see how Seattle voters react -- will they agree to fight the 20-cent-per-bag tax? Or will there be a backlash against the PBA effort?

Keep California Beautiful is attracting some attention with its first new public service announcement in three years, a catchy TV spot with a 1960s theme that urges people to take responsibility for the marine debris problem.

The spot isn't preachy -- it tackles the subject with humor, with a group of teens singing and dancing as they trash the beach.

Our sister magazine Advertising Age has featured the spot, and today The New York Times has a story about the effort.

Even if you don't live in California, don't be surprised if you see the PSA. According to the NYT story, Keep California Beautiful has given the new spot to Keep America Beautiful to use in other states beaches.

California's Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee, in three separate votes on July 15, voted 7-0 not to list bisphenol A on the state's list of toxic chemicals under the voter-approved Proposition 65.

Environmental groups and consumer health advocates that were lobbying to put BPA on the list consider the votes a minor setback. The Los Angeles Times' Greenspace blog quotes one saying "We see the decision as basically a speed bump on the way to banning a chemical that we think people should not be ingesting, especially pregnant women or infants and toddlers."

Even Dorothy Burk, chairwoman of the committee that voted in favor of BPA, told the Times in a phone interview: "I think if I had a baby I probably would try to use glass."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of polycarbonate.

There definitely has been more critical coverage of this issue in the news media in recent weeks, with more experts questioning the importance of placing restrictions on BPA.

But BPA bans aren't going away anytime soon.

If one company uses recycled content to make a product, and another makes the same product out of a bioplastic, which item is more sustainable?

It's a matter of opinion, of course. But until now, my opinion -- or yours -- was just as as valid as any other.

Starting July 16, there will be a new standard.

That's when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will unveil its long-awaited sustainability index, which will use life-cycle assessment to to measure the environmental impact of all the products it sells.

Marc Gunther of Slate's The Big Money blog has an informative item on Wal-Mart's plan.

This will likely have major impact on some plastics markets, including packaging and housewares.

But keep in mind that the changes have already started to occur in those markets, since Wal-Mart has been talking about sustainability with its suppliers for several years.

Congratulations to Ira Boots, chairman and CEO of Berry Plastics Corp. who was recently named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2009 in the Midwest Region.

The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses. Boots was selected by an independent panel of judges, and the award was presented on June 26 in Chicago.

In a news release, Boots said: "It has been my honor to work with and among so many talented individuals and employees of Berry Plastics through the years. Our commitment to the industry and dedication to our customers has been the catalyst to our growth and financial performance. I am humbled and appreciative with receiving this prestigious award from Ernst and Young."

As a Midwest award winner, Boots is now eligible for consideration for the E&Y Entrepreneur Of The Year national program.

Boots is a professional who's comfortable talking about finances, production, issues and trends. It's nice to see plastics company executives continue to get this kind of positive attention.

Bundanoon, a town with about 2,000 residents in New South Wales, is in the spotlight today, as it can claim to be the first town in Australia -- perhaps in the world -- to ban bottled water.

The town, which is about 2 hours from Sydney, had a community vote with about 400 people participating. Only two voted against the ban.

It will now be illegal for shops to sell bottled water. The town will install water fountains on main street "so people can fill their bottles for free," according to this story from London's Telegraph newspaper.

"Visitors to the town will also be discouraged, but not banned, from drinking bottled water," according to the report.

So what'll it be, Bundanoonans? Water fountains, a Coke, or a Foster's?

Polystar Packaging Inc., a Montreal-based film extruder that usually keeps a pretty low profile, made headlines last week when various newspapers reported that its owner, Hershey Friedman, plans to buy a meat packing plant in Iowa.

Friedman is buying Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, out of bankruptcy by paying part of the $21 million that Agriprocessors owes to its creditors.

According to a report in The Canadian Jewish News, the Agriprocessors plant was once the largest kosher meat supplier in the United States.

Andrew Winston, a nationally recognized expert on green business, says he heard the sound of "taps" being played for the plastic shopping bag last week.

Since so much of the plastics industry's efforts have gone into fighting legislative initiatives against plastic bags, it's interesting to note that Winston thinks that retailers' decisions to reduce bag use are just as significant.

Winston writes on The Huffington Post blog today about a meeting that he attended in Brazil with Wal-Mart Brazil and all of its suppliers. The meeting wasn't just about plastic bags -- it was a wide-ranging discussion of Wal-Mart's sustainability goals.

He notes that the company used the meeting to unveil a big national campaign, in cooperation with the Brazilian government, to drastically reduce plastic bag use. Wal-Mart's goal is to reduce bag use 50 percent by 2013. In Brazil, they are participating in an television ad campaign featuring a popular musician with the slogan "Saco E um Saco," which translates as either "A bag is a pain in the butt" or "A bag sucks."

"Either way, it's a funny, yet aggressive way to get people to stop using these things," Winston notes. "All companies should take note of this kind of coordinated effort by governments and other companies -- imagine what happens if your product, manufacturing process, or sourcing strategy ends up on the societal bad list."

As I've noted before, plastic bags won't be the only product facing this kind of pressure -- and Winston (who spoke last year at our Sustain '08 plastics business summit) agrees:

"Bags are not the only products facing this kind of challenge -- it's happening to bottled water as well. But nothing compares to the coordinated global attack on plastic bags. Once your product is declared a pain in the butt, where do you go from there?"

The Baltimore Sun newspaper editorialized today against a proposed 25-cent tax on plastic and paper grocery bags, arguing that it "smacks of a tax on the poor in the middle of a recession."

The column notes that the proposed tax is deliberately high to encourage residents to buy and use reusable bags instead of single-use bags.

The Sun thinks encouraging residents to recycle bags is a better idea.

Baltimore should take steps to reduce the number of disposable bags its residents use. The city should encourage merchants to give a rebate to people who bring their own bags, and officials should amend Baltimore's single-stream recycling program so that it, like some suburban counties, accepts bundles of used plastic bags. The city should also require that all grocery stores have recycling bins for bags.

It is certainly unsightly to see plastic bags blow in the breeze, get caught in tree branches or float through the Inner Harbor. But that's not a good enough reason for Baltimore to lead the nation in enacting what could become a significant and regressive tax increase.

Progressive Bag Affiliates, which has been fighting bag bans and taxes around the country, should be pleased with this stance. Will it help convince Baltimore's City Council?

Canada's National Post newspaper today has a story analyzing whether Toronto's new 5-cent tax on plastic grocery bags is legal.

According to the story, Toronto's City Council won the legal authority to do things like tax grocery bags as part of a 2006 law passed by the province of Ontario, which permits the city to enact any bylaw as long as it is related to the "economic, social and environmental well-being" of the municipality.

But the story notes that with the bag law, Toronto became "the first municipality in Canada to pass a law that dictates part of the business relationship between two other parties."

So, if the plastics industry decides to challenge the law in court, would it stick? The answer isn't clear.

The story notes that courts have given cities leeway in passing laws for the general public good. But it also cited a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2001 that permitted a town in Quebec to ban pesticides, but said there are limits to municipalities' powers.

It will be interesting to see if Canada's plastics industry -- or some of its bag suppliers -- decide to test the law. A suit could discourage other communities from passing similar laws. But a losing case could open the floodgates.

Readers seem shocked by the news today that Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, on Monday called on all countries to immediately take steps to ban single-use plastic bags.

His comments came with the release of a report on the growing global problem of marine litter.

"Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere -- there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere," he said in a news release. "Other waste can be cut by boosting public awareness, and proposing an array of economic incentives and smart market mechanisms that tip the balance in favor of recycling, reducing or re-use rather than dumping into the sea."

The 234-page report (warning: it's a huge file) notes that plastics are the main ingredient in marine debris:

Plastic - especially plastic bags and PET bottles - is the most pervasive type of marine litter around the world, accounting for over 80 per cent of all rubbish collected in several of the regional seas assessed.

Plastic debris is accumulating in terrestrial and marine environments worldwide, slowly breaking down into tinier and tinier pieces that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web. Plastics collect toxic compounds that then can get into the bodies of organisms that eat the plastic. Global plastic production is now estimated at 225 million tons per year.

What does this mean? Well, it is a kick in the gut for a sector of the plastics industry that was feeling pretty good after some recent victories in efforts to stop bag bans.

Steiner's comments, and the UN report, generated a ton of headlines around the world. That's going to contribute to the public perception that plastic bags are clogging landfills and trashing the oceans.

A former bag company owner emailed some interesting these thoughts on the issue today. He notes that the global bag-ban trend is fed by plastics' negative public perception. He blames plastics industry leaders who "led the industry into the world-wide public image toilet" by failing to devote the necessary resources to education and image-building efforts.

This is an incredible situation - a "UN", fergodsake, world-wide ban on single-use plastic bags.

Regardless of one's ups and downs (assuming it hasn't yet been fatal), it's always comforting to think your professional work has made at least a few contributions to your industry and to the world, greater or lesser, in addition to building your own cash reserves. Abject "plastic product stewardship", to use their euphemism, has resulted in thousands of people being blasted as having spent their entire career - and many family fortunes - damaging the world to a greater degree. What wasted lives and assets so many of us committed to that unseen, unintended and ridiculously-accused result.

No one should foolishly find comfort in not being a "single-use bag producer" today. "Single-use plastic everything" is next.

That's a sobering thought, and it may be close to the truth. There's an anti-plastics bias that's evident -- supporters of the ban would tell you that it's warranted -- because Steiner isn't calling for a ban on all single-use bags -- just the plastic ones.

Many plastics molders are geniuses at finding ways to make products using less resin, or less expensive materials. Warner Home Video got some attention for its efforts on Sunday, in a story on its lightweight DVD packaging on The New York Times' Web site.

The story, headlined "Making a Case for the Environment and the Bottom Line," notes that Warner, "by far the world's largest distributor of television and movies on DVDs, has started releasing all of its new and library titles in cases that have 20 percent less plastic, a spokeswoman said. In some instances, the cases feature a thin layer of plastic; others have cutouts in the walls."

Cutting the weight of its jewel boxes will reduce the division's carbon emissions by 31 percent, according to the story.

The D.C. Council voted to put a 5 cent tax on plastic bags yesterday. Do newspapers, like The Washington Post, have to pay the tax -- or give up plastic sleeves?

The answer is no, according to Andrew Alexander, the Post's ombudsman. He writes in his blog today that the sleeves are "safe" from the D.C. plastic tax.

This despite the fact that the Post "has written several editorials supporting the nickel tax, including one that ran several days before a hearing on the legislation in early April," he writes.

Alexander notes that some opponents of the tax felt it was hypocritical of the newspaper to support a tax, while at the same time using plastic bags to protect its morning newspapers from the weather.

Do you think?

Other bags exempt from the tax: Door-hanger bags; dry cleaning bags; packages of bags intended for use in holding garbage, pet waste, or yard waste; bags provided by pharmacists for prescription drugs; bags used by consumers inside stores to package bulk items such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, candy, or small hardware items; bags to wrap frozen foods, meat or fish, flowers or potted plants, or other items where dampness may be a problem; and bags to carry unwrapped prepared foods or bakery goods.

Environmental blogs are buzzing this week with stories on a leaked email from a trade group for metal containers on efforts to block bans of bisphenol A.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Washington Post and Environmental Working Group obtained copies of the email, which gives an insider look at the metal can industry's strategy for dealing with BPA-related safety issues.

The group, the North American Metal Packaging Alliance Inc., is being blasted in the blogs, with more than one comparison to the tobacco industry.

Here's a sample of the email:

Attendees suggested using fear tactics (e.g. "Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?") as well as giving control back to consumers (e.g. you have a choice between the more expensive product that is frozen or fresh or foods packaged in cans) as ways to dissuade people from choosing BPA-free packaging. Attendees noted, in the past, the different associations have had a reactive strategy with the media, with very limited proactive outreach in reaching out to journalists. The committee agrees they need to promote new, relevant content to get the BPA perspective into the media mix. The committee believes industry studies are tainted from the public perspective.

The committee doubts social media outlets, such as Facebook or Twitter, will
work for positive BPA outreach. The committee wants to focus on quality instead
of quantity in disseminating messages (e.g. a young kid or pregnant mother
providing a positive quote about BPA, a testimonial from an outside expert,
providing positive video, advice from third party experts, and relevant messaging
on the GMA website). Members noted traditional media outreach has become
too expensive (they have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars) and
the media is starting to ignore their side. The committee doubts obtaining a
scientific spokesperson is attainable. Their "holy grail" spokesperson would be a
"pregnant young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about
the benefits of BPA."

Eventually, the committee concluded before deciding on the tactics to spread
their messages, they need to develop the messages. The committees plan to
fund a joint survey and message testing--what new messages they need to
sell--before implementing a website and creating materials. Another task group will be implemented to finalize how to develop messages and aggressively use
electronic media to deliver those messages.

According to The Washington Post, the accuracy of the note was confirmed by Kathleen M. Roberts, a lobbyist for the North American Metal Packaging Alliance.

NAMPA has a statement on its Web site today attacking the Milwaukee paper's report. The trade group's site calls the memo "blatantly inaccurate and fabricated," although it goes on to defend the tactics.

"The Journal's attempt to pass off this illegitimate memo from an unidentified source as proof that industry is trying to manipulate the process is shoddy journalism at best and a breach of journalistic ethics at worst," it says. "The fact is, despite the best efforts of the Journal to portray the meeting as something sinister, it was nothing more than an effort by industry to find a way to portray correctly the science about BPA that has been repeatedly ignored by the media."

Meanwhile, the American Chemistry Council has two BPA-related statements today.

One criticizes a California Senate vote today to restrict BPA in some consumer products, saying that the legislature "bowed to pressure from vocal special interest groups. If this bill becomes law, it will do nothing to enhance product safety; it will, however, result in reduced product choice for consumers and needlessly more expensive food products."

The second welcomes a congressional request to the Food and Drug Administration to expedite its review of the scientific evidence on the safety BPA in food-contact products.

The Wall Street Journal has two recent stories on hiring trends that happen to quote plastics company executives who have recently added staff.

The first, headlined "Manufacturers Get Top Talent for Hard-to-Fill Jobs," notes that the recession "has a silver lining for manufacturers whose sales haven't plummeted: a flood of highly qualified candidates even for tough-to-fill jobs like electricians and mechanics." The story notes that closure maker Phoenix Closures Inc. has hired about six people since November, and President Bert Miller has been pleased with the choices available.

Jeff Zimmerman, a 33-year-old with 14 years of factory experience, is one. He was laid off last summer from a job with a plastic-mold company that supplied a car maker. Hired in November as the night production supervisor for the Phoenix plant, he has already transferred his experience, instituting a system for tracking and communicating production issues that has reduced downtime for certain machines, he said. "They've treated me very well and they're still working seven days a week," he said.

The other story, "The New Trouble on the Line," highlights a trend of employers screening prospective hires with long interviews on the phone, before bringing candidates in for a face-to-face meeting. The story notes that employers have been getting plenty of candidates who meet basic qualifications, so they need more time to screen them on the phone in order to bring in the best candidates.

This story quotes Joyce Foster, VP of human resources at Hilex Poly Co. LLC, who says "you can be pickier" because salaried job openings have been attracting up to three times as many qualified applicants than during more robust economic times.

It must be a good sign for the plastics industry that when the WSJ went looking for companies that are hiring, it found a couple of plastics packaging companies.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has dropped his proposal to place a 5 cent tax on plastic bags, according to several news Web sites.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn opposed the plastic bag fee, telling the mayor that the majority of council members would not support legislation that they thought would be seen as a sales tax on food.

Will that attitude carry over to other communities where local mayors and councils are considering bag taxes?

Starting Oct. 1, it will be illegal to throw away plastic bottles in North Carolina.

According to this story in the Elizabeth City, N.C., Daily Advance, the law will prohibit disposal of rigid plastic containers. Scott Mouw, environmental supervisor for the state Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, told the newspaper that the state expects a huge environmental payoff, in addition to economic benefits. By collecting more HDPE and PET, local recyclers will benefit, as well as the state's plastics processors.

Mike Verespej, Plastics News' staff reporter who covers recycling, talked to Mouw for some stories recently, too. In our recent special report on recycling, Verespej's sources noted that the market for HDPE is "a little bleak" right now, while PET is experiencing an uptick.

I enjoyed some of the reader comments on the Daily Advance story. One reader suggests that the government pay people to go to the dumps and sort trash for recycling. Wouldn't it be easier collect them in a recycling bin, rather than digging through a landfill?

This is the first day that the city of Toronto is requiring stores to charge customers a nickel each for single-use plastic bags.

With all the debate about bag taxes in New York and various cities in California, Toronto's city council passed and implemented its bag tax pretty quickly. The original proposal was to give shoppers a 10-cent-per-bag discount to those who brought their own reusable bags.

The city wants to cut by 70 percent the 460 million plastic bags used in Toronto per year by 2012.

For those of you in Toronto who plan to avoid the 5 cent tax by using reusable bags, don't forget not to use the same bags for food that you use for diapers and gym clothes.

Back in the 1990s, Tyco Plastics & Adhesives Group became one of the biggest players in the North American market for plastic film.

The company built an empire on acquisitions -- for a while, it seemed like Tyco was buying a half a dozen small film extruders every year.

The architect of that strategy was Dennis Kozlowski, then-CEO of Tyco International Ltd., a conglomerate modeled off of General Electric Co., with a high-flying manager who was frequently quoted in the business press, or photographed sailing his fancy yacht.

Kozlowski eventually crashed and burned, convicted of tax evasion. Today he's in the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, N.Y., where he was interviewed recently by business reporter Peter Hossli.

Hossli has posted his very interesting Q&A interview with Kozlowski. It doesn't go into plastics-related details -- this story is more about how his life has changed behind bars.

Here's a taste:

You've been in this prison for a couple of months now. Have you made friends?

Kozlowski: I'm in a protected custody unit. Right now there are 13 of us in the unit and the interaction is fairly limited. We have nothing in common. There are no inmates I would reasonably have over to my house for lunch. Most of them are here for sexual crimes with children. I never thought I would be sitting around and taking my meals with and sharing the same space with lots of child molesters.

What do you tell them why you're in here?

Kozlowski: People tend to know why I'm here even before I got here. I was told by one of the officers here, "Don't say anything as to the reason why you're here." When I got here, one of the inmates here already had one of the magazines about my conviction. There are no secrets in jail.

Why are you here?

Kozlowski: I was a victim of the times. I was prosecuted at a time that Enron and Worldcom and other companies got into big trouble and went bankrupt and hurt a lot of investors and hurt a lot of employees in the process.

You were convicted for tax evasion on an art deal, and for stealing bonuses.

Kozlowski: I think the jury got it wrong. I believe I earned those bonuses. I think I'm here simply because of the times. People lost money in the stock market in 2001 and 2002. Somebody had to be blamed for that. I became the poster boy for that. I still firmly believe I am not guilty of any crime that they've charged me with and that the jury convicted me of.

Kozlowski definitely was his era's poster boy for executive excess. It's interesting to see how he's doing in prison -- and how he explains the infamous $2 million birthday party for his wife in Sardinia, and the $6,000 shower curtains.

Plastic straws seem like pretty simple products, right? But an inventor near Atlanta has come up with an interesting new version that prevents a common problem -- juice squirting out the end of the straw when you insert it into a juice box or pouch.

By the way, don't you hate it when that happens? Somehow the straw always seem to be aimed at my shirt.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story about Robert Stribling of Between, Ga., who came up with the clever straw.

The basic idea was simple enough: add a valve to the top of the straw that would permit liquid to rise only when drawn by mouth. The bottom part of the straw looks like the others, long and straight. But the top, the piece that goes into the mouth, is different.

The tricky part of Stribling's innovation -- the part that's required years of planning, engineering, manufacturing research and testing for safety and functionality -- is the material that goes into that mouthpiece. It's liquid silicon rubber, an inert, engineered resin made from sand that thus far has had mostly medical and automotive applications.

Stribling has deals to produce the material and to design and assemble the machinery to make the straws.

Stribling's company, The Last Straw LLC, hasn't made him a million bucks -- yet. According to the story, he's looking for a beverage company willing to give his straw a try.

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association is getting some media attention today for a microbiological study that it commissioned on the safety of reusable shopping bags.

It turns out that reusable bags can be a breeding ground for potentially scary stuff: bacteria including E. coli and Salmonella, plus mold and yeast.

The researchers noted that using reusable bags as a multi-purpose tote -- something it saw from the majority of bag owners in this study, is a big concern, "particularly if the reusable bags are used to transport gym equipment or diapers. Gym equipment may carry drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains, skin infecting dermatophyte fungi and other dangerous microorganisms."

Among the conclusions: drafting of protocols on the hygienic use of reusables, including suggestions for regular replacement of reusable bags.

My first thought, before reading the entire report, was that consumers can avoid all the hazards of reusable bags (often made of nonwoven polypropylene or other polymers) by simply washing their bags regularly. But the study notes:

Reusable bags can in principle be cleaned, but drying them out thoroughly is problematical and their flimsy nature deters scrubbing that would remove organic deposits. Any imperfect cleaning would tend to add water to incompletely removed food material and thus inadvertently boost microbial growth.

Serious consideration needs to be given to a microbiologically adequate cleaning protocol for such bags. At very least, if people do choose to wash their bags, it is critical that they not lay them flat to dry but instead turn them inside out and suspend them in order to properly air them out. This will avoid the creation of a moist habitat for bacteria, mold and yeast. Consideration should also be given to replacing the reusables regularly to avoid the whole issue of bacterial build up.

Some critics may dismiss the results of this study because it was commissioned by CPIA, which you might assume could be trying to cast doubt on the safety of reusable bags in order to slow the avalanche of taxes and bans on plastic shopping bags.

But the trade group notes that it "strongly supports reduction and reuse, and recognizes use of reusables as good environmental practice, but it does not want to see these initiatives inadvertently compromise public health and safety."

So there you have it. Go ahead and use reusable bags to tote your groceries. But don't use the same bags for food that you use to carry your gym clothes or dirty diapers.

And, for goodness sake, wash them once in a while, dry them carefully, and don't continue to use them to carry food after they get dirty and gross.

Nestle Waters North America and other bottled water companies have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York to stop the state from implementing a deposit law on water bottles.

Nestle Waters CEO Kim Jeffery released a statement that said in part: "We believe the best ones encourage recycling of all containers, do not hurt consumers and do not favor special interests. The New York bottle bill fails all three tests. Moreover, the new law is unconstitutional, and we need a sound foundation if we are going to build a lasting and effective recycling program."

The company also highlighted opposition to the N.Y. deposit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who owns a small bottler called Keeper Springs.

The bottlers have a point about drinks being treated unequally under the law, since it covers water but not sports drinks. Still, their cries that they support recycling, but oppose deposits, come across as hollow.

About a year ago, I posted an item about Coca-Cola Co.'s thoughts about bioresins. Fast forward to today, and it's apparent that Coke has made quite a bit of progress in just 11 months.

This morning, Coke introduced a new bottle made a blend of conventional and bioresin materials that it dubbed the PlantBottle.

Up to 30 percent of the resin used the in bottle is made from PET sugar cane and molasses as feedstocks.

According to Coke, bottles made from the blend "can be processed through existing manufacturing and recycling facilities without contaminating traditional PET."

"This innovation is a real win because it moves us closer to our vision of zero waste with a material that lessens our carbon footprint and is also recyclable," said Scott Vitters, director of sustainable packaging for Coke, in a news release.

Coca-Cola North America will pilot the PlantBottle with Dasani and sparkling brands in select markets later this year, and with vitaminwater in 2010.

A Web site called Climate Culture got some attention today for an interesting Top 10 list -- the Top 10 Green Myths.

A few of the "myths" have a plastics angle:

No. 6: Given a choice between paper and plastic bags, go with paper. Fact: From a standpoint of carbon emissions, they're equally bad. Plastic is worst from a solid waste perspective. (But plastic is a littering problem in many places.) Most environmentally friendly of all, as you already know, is bringing your own resusable bags [which is, admittedly, easier if you aren't buying groceries for a family of four].

and,

No. 9: Buy milk in paper or glass cartons if you have the choice. Fact: Because half-gallon plastic milk jugs use much less material, they have lower life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions than glass or paper containers of the same size.

Judy Lowe of The Christian Science Monitor's Bright Green Blog challenged Zeke Hausfather, executive vice president of energy science at Climate Culture, to share the science behind the "myth" claims.

Here's what he had to say. Regarding paper vs. plastic bags, he said: "Paper and plastic bags both require comparable amounts of energy per bag for production, given that paper bags are considerably more massive than plastic ones, though paper bags are slightly preferred. Data on lifecycle carbon emissions for paper and plastic are taken from FRIDGE: Socio-economic impact assessment of the proposed plastic bag regulations. Other reports argue that paper bags have higher lifecycle GHG emissions, though methodologies and analysis boundaries differ across reports."

On the milk packaging question, he wrote: "This is based on a the revised version of the comprehensive lifecycle analysis of plastic, paper, and glass half-gallon milk containers from Franklin Associates."

If a retailer starts charging for plastic bags, some consumers will start using reusable bags, or opt out of using bags at all. But how many will choose to pay for a bag? The answer comes from Marks & Spencer plc in the U.K.

The retailer started charging 5 pence for bags last year, and the Daily Mail reports today that the result of the "Banish the Bags" campaign was an 83 percent reduction in bag use in 12 months.

That adds up to 400 million bags "that would otherwise have ended up in landfill or blighting streets, the countryside and seas," according to the story.

By the numbers: M&S cut the number of bags it distributed from 464 million in the previous year to 77 million. The £1.2 million (US$1.8 million) that it collected -- 5 pence at a time -- went to an environmental group called Groundwork, which used it to create or improve greener living spaces.

Here's a proposed law related to plastic bags that the industry might support. Madison, Wis., Alderman Judy Compton and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on Tuesday will propose banning the disposal of clean, recyclable plastic bags.

According to this story in the Wisconsin State Journal, soiled bags could still be thrown out. But if citizens throw away a clean bag -- instead of recycling it -- they could receive a $100 fine for a first offense, $200 for a second offense and $400 for third and later offenses in a year.

"It's a matter of putting our money where our mouth is on environmental issues," Compton told the newspaper. "It's really a simple thing."

She would prefer to ban bags -- a la San Francisco. But Compton offered this proposal instead, as a compromise, because she doesn't want to penalize residents who like using plastic bags. (Some people really do... really.)

Madison doesn't plan to create a trash cop who will inspect everyone's garbage, looking for offenders. But it will make it easier for residents to recycle bags. The plan calls for investing in new drop-off recycling sites.

This is an interesting idea. It should boost bag recycling, which is pretty pitiful in most communities. It also allows people who like reusing plastic bags to do so without being penalized (assuming they don't litter, of course). That's a plus for dog owners.

Will the plastics industry actually support this idea, with its roots in the liberal hotbed of Madison? I don't see any reason why not.

NewScientist.com has an interesting story today about boosting the power output of biodiesel by adding polystyrene cups to the fuel.

The story notes that Iowa State University mechanical engineers dissolved PS into biodiesel at concentrations ranging from 2 to 20 percent PS by weight.

"A polystyrene cup will dissolve almost instantly in biodiesel, like a snowflake in water," said Song-Charng Kong, a co-author of the study. She noted that PS does not break down as well in petroleum-based diesel nor in other liquid fuels.

Tests in a tractor engine showed that as PS concentrations increased to 5 percent, power output increased at approximately the same rate.

"Turning plastic into fuel is a way to get rid of garbage and generate electricity," Kong said.

If researchers can figure out a way to burn the material more completely, and thus reduce unwanted emissions, this could be an interesting way to recycle PS waste -- at least some of the cleaner stuff.

The source of the report is a study titled "Energy Recovery from Waste Plastics by Using Blends of Biodiesel and Polystyrene in Diesel Engines" from the Energy & Fuels journal.

Three Bristol, Vt., high school students went to the state legislature this week proposing a tax on plastic bags. They ended up getting a lesson on politics.

The Rutland Herald has the report on Tuesday's testimony in Montpelier by Torin Olivetti, 18, Cooper Thompson, 17, and Alex Horn, 17, before the state House Ways and Means Committee.

According to the story, the Mount Abraham Union High School students suggested a 6 cent bag tax to encourage use more widespread use reuseable bags, and to raise new revenue for the state.

Horn explained: "We use plastic bags for everything from the grocery store to the mall. But these bags aren't great for the environment, so we started thinking of ways to discourage people from using them and encourage them to switch to reuseable bags."

Legislators had some interesting advice for the trio.

Rep. David Zuckerman, P-Burlington, suggested they change the language in the bill from a tax to a fee. I love that advice. Voters hate taxes -- but fees are hunky-dory, right?

Rep. David Sharpe, D-Bristol, suggested building a grassroots movement for their plan. Isn't that what they were trying to do? I don't think these kids are registered lobbyists.

The story noted that representatives of the Vermont Grocers' Association and the Vermont Retailers Association opposed the bag tax, while supporting the idea of encouraging consumers to use reusable bags.

Following Tuesday's popular Plastics Blog post on a St. Louis high school student's Earth Day newspaper column, I thought it would be interesting to note some other students' efforts in opposition to plastic bags.

Remember next time, kids -- if you want the legislators to like your idea, don't call it a tax. Call it a fee.

The American Chemistry Council's Plastics Division offered two training sessions on the sustainability of plastic packaging at Wal-Mart's Sustainable Packaging Fair, held April 14-15. The first session, entitled Plastic Packaging and Sustainability, was delivered by ACC's Keith Christman. The second, given by Jeff Wooster of Dow Chemical Co., addressed Bioplastics.

The presentations use lifecycle assessment and Wal-Mart's packaging scorecard to show how plastic packaging reduces environmental impacts compared to alternatives.

Now ACC will offer these training sessions via a free webinar on May 13. Interested? Sign up here to participate.

Forgive the headline on this post -- I'm not advocating beating up anyone. But blog reader Sam Longstreth at Brentwood Plastics Inc. in St. Louis felt a bit like he was reduced to that last week, when he wrote a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch responding to an Earth Day column written by a high school student.

Liz Godar, a junior at Villa Duchesne High School and a member of the Interschool Ecological Council, wrote the April 22 column that started the debate, headlined "The plastic bag is not a harmless necessity." Here's an excerpt:

Plastic bags are more than they appear. The consequences of this oversight are severe and at this point, no longer can be ignored. Plastic bags are made largely through petroleum, increasing the United States' already overwhelming dependency on foreign oil. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States uses about 320 billion plastic bags and sacks each year.

Perhaps the worst effect is their catastrophic environmental consequences. Plastic bags account for 10 percent of the waste built up along the U.S. shoreline and kill thousands of birds and marine animals each year, from seals to turtles to dolphins. These bags break down into even more toxic petro-polymers that then work their way into our food system. Not only are billions of these soon-to-be-toxic waste bags floating around in our waterways and oceans, but they will take 500 years to disappear completely.

While plastic bags are recyclable, fewer than 1 percent actually are recycled. Even so, the recycling process is extremely economically insensitive. According to the San Francisco Department of the Environment, processing and recycling a ton of plastic bags costs about $4,000, and the new recycled material will then be sold in the commodities market for a pathetic sum of $32.

The column goes on to push for consumers to reject plastic bags, with praise for various communities that have passed bag taxes or bans.

That didn't sit well with Longstreth, president of Brentwood Plastics, a St. Louis-based film extruder.

Longstreth wrote this reply to the newspaper:

It is apparent that Villa Duchesne does not teach chemistry prior to the second semester of the junior year, otherwise it is probable that Miss Godar would not have regurgitated the pernicious nonsense she is being taught by the Interschool Ecological Council. Had she taken chemistry, Miss Godar would be able to figure out that high density polyethylene, the product that she finds so dangerous, is chemically inert. In other words, it does not react with other chemicals. That's why, if she had taken chemistry, she would know that the statement that polyethylene "bags break down into even more toxic petropolymers" cannot be defended. I hate to break this to Miss Godar at the tender age of 17, but she should not believe everything the government tells her. The San Francisco Department of Environment's price of $32 per ton for post-consumer polyethylene is so far off the mark that it makes anyone who purchases polyethylene burst into laughter. I will buy every ton Miss Godar can find at $32, I'll even pay the freight.

Bans are emotionally satisfying quick answers to complex problems. But do bans work? If you ban alcohol, will people not drink? If you ban abortions, will women not get them? If you ban guns, will people not kill each other? If you ban plastic bags, will people not litter?

The Post-Dispatch published Longstreth's letter today, although they toned it down a bit.

Longstreth is a rare breed these days. He's a plastics industry executive willing to stick his neck out and comment, with his name attached, on a news report that he felt was unfair.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently honored four Westport, Conn., residents for their part in enacting a ban on plastic bags in their town.

Jonathan Cunitz, Liz Milwe, Gene Seidman and Jeffrey Wieser were among the winners of the 2009 Environmental Award. EPA's Web site notes:

In early 2008, the four Members of District 4 of the Westport, Connecticut Representative Town Meeting (RTM) met to discuss the concern of the increasing appearance of plastic bags on the town's roads, streams, river and beaches. Jonathan Cunitz, Liz Milwe, Gene Seidman, and Jeffrey Wieser spent the next several months researching the issue of plastic bags in the environment and the available alternatives to remedy this growing problem. After many meetings with town leaders, merchants, students, residents and other members of the Westport RTM, they concluded that the appropriate response was to enact an ordinance that encouraged the use of reusable shopping bags and ban the use of plastic retail checkout bags. In the months to follow, the ordinance was discussed at various meetings and finally submitted to the proper committees for approval. It received overwhelming support, and was approved by a vote of 26 to 5. Westport has now become one of the first communities east of California to pass a ban on retail checkout bags and its ordinances is the most extensive in the country, applying to all stores and even farmers' markets and sidewalk sales.

I think it's noteworthy that EPA chose to honor a group for banning a plastic product.

You may recall that The Plastics Blog has touched on the Westport ban a couple of times in the past year.

Plastic bag makers and the American Chemistry Council made a pretty big announcement yesterday -- a pledge that they intend to use 40 percent recycled content in plastic carryout bags by 2015, including 25 percent post-consumer material.

They say the move will save enough energy to heat 200,000 homes.

Seems like a natural for news reporters looking for Earth Day stories, right? I thought I'd check into how the story is being played.

USA Today gave the industry side, along with some views of opponents:

"It's annoying. And it's transparent," says Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network. "The death knell has sounded for plastic bags. They're just trying to continue to make a bad thing."

The Natural Resources Defense Council agrees: "We don't want people to use disposable bags. We want people to use reusable bags," says Darby Hoover, a senior research specialist.

Management consultant Pam Murtaugh says the Earth Day gambit will backfire. "They're late to the party of good sense. In bragging about it now, they're only building their own glass house."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted that one local environmentalist gave the plan a somewhat lukewarm endorsement:

"Forty percent as a target six years from now is a very positive step," said Heather Trim of People for Puget Sound, one of the groups pushing for the 20-cent per bag fee in Seattle. "But a turtle choking on a plastic bag doesn't notice if the bag is recycled."

Trim said people in Seattle should avoid using plastic bags altogether. "That's why we have this (proposed) green fee. The sentiment of Americans is turning away from plastics."

The comments sections of both stories, as usual, feature a pretty healthy debate on the pros and cons of plastic bags.

(And yes, I noticed that someone named "Clear Perpsective" kicked off the discussion on both sites with identical responses. Would "Clear Perspective" care to identify him/herself on the blog?)

Overall, I'm surprised that the story didn't get more attention today. Perhaps it will be wrapped into more Earth Day coverage in tomorrow's headlines.

Attention dittoheads: Rush Limbaugh loves plastic bags.

Is that a good thing?

The radio talk show host celebrated Earth Day, in part, by highlighting the contribution of Gordon Dancy -- credited with creating the first plastic grocery bag.

According to the Christian Science Monitor's vote blog, Limbaugh also announced today that he will personally see to it that he destroys two acres of rain forest.

"What else am I going to do for Earth Day?" he asked. "I'm going to have every one of my cars driven as much as possible today; I've got my airplane flying to Los Angeles and back; ... all the lights are going to be on, the air conditioning down to 68 degrees in all, well, four out of the five houses -- the property manager in [the fifth house] likes the temperature down to 65 degrees."

Probably not the image the plastics industry was hoping for today. Thanks anyway, Rush.

The Toronto Star is the latest newspaper to assign a reporter to the task of trying to live a week without plastic. Once again, the reporter discovers that it's really difficult to buy food at a modern supermarket without any plastic packaging.

Once again, the reporter also fails to note that the assignment is basically pretend, because there's no real effort to live without any plastics. The focus here is pretty much on packaging. And why do food companies use plastic instead of other materials? There's no effort to find out -- just a general plastics-are-bad attitude.

Star feature writer Francine Kopun starts the story by saying that living without plastic is a fantasy of hers:

I dream of whacking every plastic toy that has been brought into our house since my son was born four years ago. My fantasy includes a brown packing box, the Goodwill and a shopping expedition to The Toy Space Inc., an eco-friendly, family-owned store that sells wooden toys.

My son will buy educational hand puppets and grow up to be an acclaimed actor. Or a best-selling author, telling Vanity Fair that he got his start making up stories for Peter and Patty puppet.

Second thoughts sour my fantasy as I mentally scan the contents of our house. The meat we buy is wrapped in plastic. So are the mushrooms, milk, cereal, bread and sparkling water. My toothbrush is plastic. I think the bumper on our Dodge Caravan is plastic.

I decide to try anyway. With everything going green these days, I should be able to make it up as I go along.

As it turns out, even organic produce is wrapped in plastic and a good, plastic-free water bottle is hard to find.

Yes, that bumper is probably plastic. Take a closer look at the car, and your house, your computer, your plumbing, your office.

You can pretend if you like, but unless you move to a log cabin without electricity (insulated cords -- remember?), you're probably going to have quite a bit of plastic in your life.

But I doubt that will stop us from seeing more newspapers and TV stations tackling this story idea again this year.

Great. Just what we all need -- another sin to possibly commit. This one, however, has nothing to do with your neighbor's wife. It has to do with "greenwashing," or "the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service."

TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, which published an original document listing "The Six Sins of Greenwashing" back in 2007, has just updated its research and added a seventh sin -- "the sin of worshipping of false labels." Its new report contains some startling information about the use and misuse of environmental marketing claims, including a 98 percent sinning rate. Here's a snippet from the executive summary:

In November 2008 and January 2009, TerraChoice researchers were sent into category-leading 'big box' retailers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia with instructions to record every product making an environmental claim. For each product, the researchers recorded product details, claim(s) details, any supporting information, and any explanatory detail or offers of additional information or support. In the United States and Canada, a total of 2,219 products making 4,996 green claims were recorded.

These claims were tested against best practices, notably against guidelines provided by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Competition Bureau of Canada, Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, and the ISO 14021 standard for environmental labeling.

Of the 2,219 North American products surveyed, over 98% committed at least one of the previously identified Six Sins of Greenwashing and a new Seventh Sin emerged.

Philadelphia-based Terrachoice explained this new sin thusly: "Some marketers are exploiting consumers' demand for third-party certification by creating fake labels or false suggestions of third-party endorsement. This development is serious enough to warrant its own category -- hence the seventh Sin."

TerraChoice offers downloadable PDF versions of both the 2007 and the updated reports on its Web site. And if this topic interests you, then you also may wish to check out this video clip of TerraChoice VP Scot Case when he discussed the first six sins last November at the Sustain '08 conference in Chicago. Another Sustain speaker, C. Steven Baker, Chicago-based head of the Federal Trade Commission's Midwest Region, in his presentation added some thoughts of his own on the topic of responsible environmental marketing.

Good luck keeping your nose clean! (and thanks to Robert Grace, editor and associate publisher of Plastics News, for contributing this post).

When I think of salty snacks, I'm not thinking "sustainability." But apparently some consumers of Frito-Lay North America Inc.'s SunChips do -- because the company announced yesterday that, by 2010, it will introduce "the first fully compostable snack chip bag made from plant-based materials."

This month the company is taking the first step, using PLA in the outer layer of its 10.5-ounce SunChips snacks bags. "We know environmentally-friendly packaging is a priority for our SunChips consumer,” said Gannon Jones, vice president, marketing, said in a news release. “Today’s launch of packaging made with 1/3 renewable materials is an important first step towards having a fully compostable chip bag in market by Earth Day 2010.”

Some major news outlets picked up the story, including USA Today, which highlights SunChips in a feature about several sustainable packaging developments.

National Public Radio posted a story and audio report on bisphenol A and how it fits into the debate on the precautionary principle.

The story, "Is 'Better Safe Than Sorry' Reason Enough For Law?", points out that even supporters of the concept of the precautionary principle disagree about where to draw the line.

To put it bluntly, when is there enough doubt about the safety of a product to ban it? Reasonable people can disagree.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein used a very broad definition of the precautionary principle last month when she introduced her bill to restrict BPA. "If you do not know for certain the chemical is benign, it should not be used," Feinstein said.

But Dr. Ted Schettler, director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, told NPR that Feinstein's standard is impossible to meet.

"It's almost impossible to prove that something will never happen," said Schettler, an expert on the precautionary principle. (He still believes BPA should be removed from food and drink containers).

Obviously the chemical industry doesn't want Feinstein's definition to set a precedent. Still, I doubt that even she would take it that far. Many chemicals that we all depend on every day in modern society are not "benign." Should we ban them all? When can we trust regulators, rather than politicians, to make these decisions?

This is probably a case of a politician oversimplifying an issue for the benefit of creating a good sound bite.

Meanwhile, BPA bans continue to gain traction, not only in Congress but in statehouses, too. In New Britain, Conn., The Herald newspaper has this report on a rally in Hartford that attracted about 50 people yesterday aimed at banning BPA. The event was sponsored by the Coalition for a Safe & Healthy Connecticut, and it was attended by state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and state Sen. Ed Meyer, co-chairman of the Environmental Committee.

According to The Herald, Blumenthal had this to say about BPA:

"This chemical kills and cripples," Blumenthal said, adding that everyone needs to demand that all manufacturers be more responsible.

Perhaps Blumenthal and Feinstein need some remedial training in writing those sound bites.

Bottled water used to be a hip product that baby boomers sipped because it was a status symbol. Not any more, according to this report from National Public Radio (and this one from the Canwest News Service), which tell us that bottled water is no longer cool.

Nancy Eve Cohen reports for NPR's Morning Edition that "after years of double-digit increases, bottled water sales have stopped rising. Industry analysts say the economy is driving the change, but they also say environmentalists may be having an effect."

Except maybe not. The report notes that Americans spent more than $11 billion on bottled water last year, and it quotes Kim Jeffrey of Nestle Waters North America saying that environmental concerns are not having much of an impact on sales.

"The problems we're seeing right now are very much attributable to the economic downturn, not to the fact that people are leaving bottled water in droves -- because it's just not happening," Jeffery said.

Likewise, the Canwest report reminds us that although Canadian bottled water sales topped $730 million in 2007, "yet, suddenly a bottle of water is about as au courant as Michael Jackson's Thriller -- still the world's best-selling album, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who will admit to ever owning it."

Reminds me of the Yogi Berra quote: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." As soon as they started selling bottled water by the case at Wal-Mart, no one wants to admit drinking it.

I've never been a bottled water fan -- I'm too cheap. Does that mean that now I'm cool? Somehow, I doubt it.

San Jose, Calif., is the new ground zero for the battle over plastic bags, thanks to a big push by the group Save the Bay called ""The Bay vs. the Bag.

The effort got lots of attention yesterday, including an in-depth post by David Lewis (executive director of Save the Bay) on Huffington Post, plus a big story on the San Jose Mercury News Web site.

Lewis went straight for the jugular in the blog post, comparing the American Chemistry Council's efforts on behalf of plastic bags to the tobacco industry's support for cigarette smoking.

When the tobacco industry tried suing cities to stop restaurant smoking bans, it fueled public anger and resolve, not a resurgence of puffing. So it is striking to see the American Chemistry Council (ACC) using the same heavy handed tactics against cities trying to reduce or eliminate plastic bags, a dominant feature of urban trash and ocean pollution.

From Phoenix to Philadelphia, and Seattle to Washington, D.C., the ACC has unleashed lawyers, lobbyists and PR flacks against local efforts to kick the plastic bag habit. But this attempt to protect industry profits could backfire, because it's based on myths that are flimsier than the bags themselves.

Likewise, the Mercury News frames the battle as a David vs. Goliath battle:

Fearing they are losing ground in the battle to eliminate litter-producing plastic bags, members of a leading Bay Area environmental group launched a counterattack Tuesday against a chief foe: the multibillion-dollar chemical industry.

If you had any doubt which side is wearing white hats, the story concludes with this quote from Save the Bay's Lewis: "There's a battle on -- it's the bay versus the bag. And we want to make sure the bay wins."

Lewis certainly won the PR war on Tuesday. I'm sure ACC will battle back with a timely letter to the editor. Will that be enough?

The Evansville (Ind.) Courier has a nice feature story today about Berry Plastics Corp., focusing on the company's history and its successful growth strategy.

I love these historical stories -- it's a great opportunity for a big local employer to tell its story to an important audience. Here's a bit from the Courier's story:

The company traces its roots to 1967, the year four men left Sunbeam Plastics — which later became Rexam — and set out on their own.

They started a business called Imperial Plastics, adopting a crown symbol which still is a part of Berry Plastics’ logo.

Yet little in their rather humble beginning boded especially well for future success. Almost from the first, Imperial Plastics found itself beset with money troubles.

Into those circumstances stepped Robert Morris, an entrepreneur in the grain business. Lacking experience in plastics, he was nonetheless willing to take a risk in a largely untried company.

An opportunity arose when American Can, a maker of tin cans, failed in an attempt to produce plastic bowls. Imperial Plastics secured the use of the can company’s molds and churned out bowls sold under the Dixie brand. By the end of the 1970s, Imperial Plastic’s revenues reached $3 million.

“That was the turning point,” [Chairman and CEO Ira] Boots said.

Boots joined the company around the same time. He recalls a much smaller operation.

In 1978, Imperial Plastics could boast of only four functional mold machines and about 40 employees. Those resources allowed it to churn out a box and a half of plastics parts each work shift.

Today Berry Plastics is one of the biggest plastics processors in the world. The company ranks No. 3 on our most recent survey or North American injection molders, No. 7 among thermoformers, and No. 7 among film and sheet manufacturers.

The story also quotes me: Evansville reporter Dan Shaw called me a few days ago for background on the company. It looks like he did a nice job.

Congratulations to Berry on your success, and thanks for sharing your story.

When you think "fire safety," do you think wood?

Not me, but that's the message from the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association, which today put out a news release titled "Plastic Pallets: From Fire Hazard to Toxic Platform?"

The group's target: deca-bromine fire retardants in plastic pallets.

"As a result of the grave concerns surrounding deca-bromine by researchers, environmental groups and fire fighters (who come into contact with the chemical in its gaseous form), lawmakers are beginning to ban the use of deca-bromine" the release says. "The states of Maine and Washington have already passed legislation and 10 other states have introduced bills that would ban the dangerous chemical. Various countries around the world have also banned deca-bromine in the electronic, furniture, toy and clothing industries. Officials may be unaware that deca-bromine is being used in these quantities in plastic pallets."

The release touts wood pallets as "the benchmark for fire safety," and it quotes Bruce Scholnick, president and CEO of NWPCA, saying: "We recognize that alternative materials each have their place, and competition breeds innovation and quality improvements. But if new technologies prove to be harmful or risky, it needs to be excluded from use. There are alternative fire retardants. Let's face it, they may be more expensive, but what price does one put on human health and our environment?"

It looks like the wood pallet makers plan to fight back against some recent gains by plastic pallet makers.

Dart Container Corp. is enlisting its workers in Lancaster, Pa., to help fight a proposed polystyrene foodservice packaging ban 70 miles away in Philadelpia.

According to this story and video on lancasteronline.com, dozens of Dart workers will participate in a May 1 company-chartered bus trip to attend a city council committee hearing on the proposal, which also calls for a 25 cent tax on plastic bags.

Dart is taking the threat seriously, according to the story:

If the "Food Service Waste Reduction" ordinance passes, creating the first such ban in Pennsylvania, the company estimates it could lose 15 percent of its sales, leading to layoffs.

Worse, with Philadelphia setting a precedent, other municipalities across the state might follow suit, intensifying the damage at Dart, company officials said.

"Everybody is scared to death," said [Susan] Leftwich, of Lancaster, a quality control inspector and 13-year employee.

She called the proposal "the No. 1 topic" of conversation among the company's 1,700 workers here [in Lancaster].

Supporters of the PS tax also plan to attend the hearing. They're asking for people to bring "piles of plastic bag litter, signs, and most importantly, other supporters."

It will be interesting to see which side brings a bigger crowd, and whether the crowd will have an impact on the committee's decision.

According to the Toledo Blade, Tom Brady, CEO of Plastic Technologies Inc., plans to resign from the University of Toledo's board of trustees on Monday so he can be considered for a position as interim dean of the university's college of education.

According to the Blade's story, UT President Lloyd Jacobs had asked Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and the Ohio Board of Regents last month to give Brady a 12-18 month leave of absence so he could be interim dean. But the regents turned down the request, and said Brady would need to resign from his trustee post to be considered for the dean's job.

Plastic Technologies has already appointed a new president to handle day-to-day operations so Brady can dedicate his time to the university.

Please don't confuse this Brady with the guy who throws a football for the Patriots and recently married a supermodel. Before founding Plastic Technologies, our Tom Brady was VP and director of technology for Owens-Illinois Inc. Today PTI is known for its research and development of new PET bottles, including its work with recycled materials.

Brady told the Blade that even if he's no longer a trustee and is not picked to lead the education college, he'll be active on behalf of the University of Toledo. "My position has been at the university that I'll do whatever I can to help," he said.

The plastic bag beat continues to be one of the hottest in environmental journalism. Here's a sampling of bag-related headlines today:

• The California Film Extruders and Converters Association and the American Chemistry Council are each backing producer-responsibility legislation in Sacramento. If one of these bills passes, it would shift the bag debate in California -- and the trend would likely spread elsewhere. Check out staff reporter Mike Verespej's coverage of the issue, posted on our Web site today.
• Whole Foods Market estimates that it has kept 150 million plastic bags from going to landfillls in the past year, since it stopped giving them out at cash registers a year ago. “At first we wondered if shoppers would just switch to paper but to our great surprise, people have been truly excited about using reusable bags,” co-President and Chief Operating Officer A.C. Gallo said in a news release.
• The city of Edmonds, Wash., may beat Seattle and become the first city in Washington state to ban plastic bags. The effort is being led by Councilman Strom Peterson, according to this report on The Daily Herald's Web site.

With communities facing tight budgets and politicians reluctant to raise property or income taxes, watch for more bag tax proposals to pop up around the country in the next few months.

Are we nearing the end of the big-box era? The retail sector has a huge impact on many key plastics markets -- housewares, packaging, appliances, electronics, toys and many more. So it is important to note that some experts believe the retail sector is preparing for huge changes -- and perhaps the recession is accelerating the trend.

Al Meyers, senior vice president of business development of TNS Retail Forward in Plano, Texas, spoke this week at the International Council of Shopping Centers' annual Fusion Conference, held in Hollywood, Fla. His topic -- how retailers will change between now and 2015.

According to this report on GlobeSt.com, Meyers expects retailers to change in order to serve smaller slices of the demographic pie. Stores will need to be smaller and more targeted in the future.

The report notes that retailers are being forced to market themselves to an audience that is both older and younger, richer and more cash strapped, and tech-savvy and decidedly not. They must adapt their approaches, layout and store sizes to accommodate the changing market.

The aging baby boom generation will be responsible for many of the changes.

“Aging boomers are one of the most dramatic disruptive waves we’ll ever experience,” Meyers said.

Boomers will want smaller, closer stores that are easier to shop, with larger signage or lettering for convenience, Meyers warned. Yet they will be more connected to stores, brands and each other via technology, reducing the need for traditional brick-and-mortar formats. “We’ll have an endless supply of kiosks to offer unlimited supply,” Meyers said.

New opportunities to fill space may be found in local and regional retailers, and even product brands, which may be forced out of some stores as retailers push their own more profitable private labels.

In fact, stores will be only a part of the focus of any retail project.

“The space becomes the destination,” Meyers said.

Meanwhile, Generation Yers are beginning to buy homes and have children. But as they enter their peak spending years, they have a different attitude about shopping than their parents did.

"The main problem is that they’re broke,” in part because of massive college loans, he said.

I wish retailers the best of luck trying to sell stuff to the "broke" generation.

Perhaps this trend has already started. The Wall Street Journal notes today that that shoppers around the world are showing preferences for less expensive and store-branded products. The story cites a new Nielsen Co. report.

"Consumers can be pretty gradual in their change of behavior," said James Russo, Nielsen's vice president of marketing. "But what this recession has showed us is that consumers are making changes quickly."

Globally, the study found consumers cutting back on purchases and moving to store brands.

One possible exception: China, where consumers prefer name brands because of concerns about product safety.

As expected, the Seattle City Council agreed to let voters decide on the fate of a proposed plastic bag tax. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes, in a story that's drawing a lot of comments, that the issue could turn into quite a battle.

Reporter Chris Grygiel sets up the conflict as a war between the greens -- environmentalists -- and some opponents with "serious green" -- the plastics industry.

Those supporting the bag fee are counting on Seattle's green-friendly electorate. If recent history is any guide, opponents will be counting on vastly superior monetary resources.

The Coalition to Stop The Seattle Bag Tax -- a group funded largely by the American Chemistry Council -- had raised nearly $250,000 by the end of February, according to Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Most of that money -- $239,000 -- had already been spent. The group paid to gather signatures to put the bag fee question before voters.

The anti-bag-tax group has $8,720 left in the bank, but could presumably raise a lot more.

Overall, this is a pretty fair story. It allows leaders on both sides of the debate to make their case. Keith Christman, of the American Chemistry Council, notes that despite environmentalist claims that they speak for the majority, the city's own polling shows that three out of five Seattle residents are against a fee on disposable bags.

"We think Seattle residents will look at this and say we don't need a punitive tax to do the right thing for the environment," Christman told the P-I.

It's interesting to see how the media describes the plastics industry. Keep this in mind: despite how it is often portrayed, D.C. insiders don't really consider the plastics industry a major player in political lobbying.

The plastic bag tax/ban debate has reached Washington, D.C., and it looks like it might get nasty. Marc Fisher of The Washington Post devotes his entire Potomac Confidential column to the subject today, and the plastics industry doesn't come across very well.

The headline is "You Can Wrap That Red Herring in a Plastic (or Paper) Bag," and he starts by comparing the American Chemistry Council's current effort to stop a proposed bag tax in D.C. to a 1987 effort that turned back a deposit on soft drink containers, which elicited help from the NAACP and Operation Push.

A group called the Progressive Bag Affiliates, funded by the American Chemistry Council and leading bag makers, has hired Darrell Carrington, a lobbyist from Annapolis who is African American. Carrington tells me that he's making the rounds of council members' offices, arguing that any fee on bags "is going to disproportionately hit low-income people, who are predominantly minorities. That's what it is. Truth is truth."

Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) has heard from more than 100 constituents who expressed their opposition, as the automated calls urged. "I'm really angry that people are portraying this as something that hurts poor people when what they're really doing is defending their own industry," she says. "It bothers me that they're making this an economic issue when the real issue is the pollution in the Anacostia River."

Retorts Carrington: "That's so dismissive and disrespectful of the poor. It's easy to sit in an ivory tower and say that."

When I seek a comment from Progressive Bag Affiliates, Shari Jackson, a leader of its campaign, says she'd be happy to talk. But the next thing I know, I get a call from their media wrangler, Jennifer Killinger, who says, "Unfortunately, we won't be able to participate in an interview."

But I get to Mark Daniels, vice president of Hilex-Poly, the nation's largest plastic bag maker, who says the appeal to minorities "is an effective argument for us because these 'taxes' really affect the minority individuals who are walking to the store."

Daniels says the industry knows there is a pollution problem. "Believe me, I'm not comfortable when I see a plastic bag in a tree, but how did it get there? When was the last time your city council went after people for littering?" He says the answer lies in more recycling, not fees or bans.

Fisher will be taking part in a live Web chat today (April 2). Check out the Post's site to participate -- it's likely that he'll be getting questions on the bag tax column.

Here's a reminder from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Web site: Today the Seattle City Council may decide whether to let voters consider a 20 cent-per-bag tax on plastic and paper grocery bags.

Seattle had passed a bag fee last year, but a petition kept the ordinance from taking effect. Now the City Council will decide whether to let a public referendum decide the issue once and for all.

For amusement, check the comments on the PI's Strange Bedfellow blog about the issue. But be prepared for lots of name calling -- apparently Seattle is riddled with "eco-zealots" "cakesniffing ecoyuppies" and "Marxists," if you believe the commenters...

This week's The New Yorker magazine has a feature story about David de Rothschild and the Plastiki. The magazine's Web site has video to accompany the story.

You remember the Plastiki -- the boat made out of old PET bottles that de Rothschild, heir to a famous banking family and author of the Global Warming Survival Handbook, is sailing on an 8,000-mile journey from San Francisco to Australia in an effort to raise awareness of marine debris problems.

In this video, de Rothschild and members of the crew talk about building the boat.

Tennessee is a frequent battleground in the debate over bottle deposits. Stop me if you've heard this before, but this could be the year the state finally passes a deposit law.

That's the opinion of Marge Davis, vice president of Scenic Tennessee, who wrote this opinion piece on the topic posted on the chattanoogan.com Web site.

Scenic Tennessee is a partner in a project called Pride of Place, which supports adoption of a deposit program. Davis notes that some business groups that had opposed deposit laws in the past are more open to the concept these days.

(Plastics News has been in favor of a national deposit law since 1994. What's taken the rest of you so long?)

Mike Verespej, Plastics News' Washington-based staff reporter who covers recycling, notes that there are nine active bottle bills this year, not counting the one in Connecticut that already passed.

Remember the marine researcher who said the threat that plastics posed to sea life was being exaggerated? Today comes word from another researcher who disagrees.

Mike James, a biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and adjunct professor with Dalhousie University's Department of Biology, looked specifically at the threat plastics pose to leatherback turtles. His findings were reported in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. The story is titled "Leatherback turtles: The menace of plastic."

“We wanted to see if plastics ingestion in leatherbacks was hype or reality,” James told Science Daily. “It was a monumental effort that looked back at necropsies over the last century from all over the world. ... After reviewing the results of 371 necropsies since 1968, we discovered over one third of the turtles had ingested plastic.”

The story explains that once leatherbacks ingest plastic -- which they apparently mistake for jellyfish -- "thousands of spines lining the throat and esophagus make it nearly impossible to regurgitate. The plastic can lead to partial or even complete obstruction of the gastrointestinal tract, resulting in decreased digestive efficiency, energetic and reproductive costs and, for some, starvation."

“Plastics ingestion doesn’t always cause death, but there are clearly health risks to the turtles,” James said.

I see that the Dallas Morning News has published an editorial favoring a tax on plastic bags. The editorial supports a proposal by Dallas state repesentative Rafael Anchía to place a 7 cent tax on plastic bags.

Here's an excerpt:

A tax on plastic might seem onerous if the alternatives weren't so readily available. Paper is an easy option. But clearly, the best choice is BYOB (bring your own bag).

Prius drivers determined to save the planet no longer have the market cornered on reusable bags. Biodegradable and reusable are all the rage. Even newspapers, including this one, are making the shift to biodegradable bags.

Sure, Texans could do this on their own, and many already have. But Anchía's bill would speed the transition, quickly raising consciousness about this plastic poison – the bags that will outlive us all.

Perhaps paying 7 cents will compel consumers to use common sense at the check-out by taking a pass on the plastic.

Any readers in Texas -- are grocery stores there collecting plastic bags for recycling? And are you surprised that the legislature is considering a tax on plastic bags -- and that the Dallas paper supports the idea?

Plastic bag taxes and bans continue to pop up just about everywhere in America these days. Some seem driven by groups like the Surfriders Foundation and others concerned about marine debris. Others have an element of "here's something that the public hates that we can tax" from cash-strapped cities like New York.

But most of the proposed taxes and bans have not been successful. (Colorado shot one down today, for example). The New York Times has a feature story on the topic today, noting that "momentum for imposing fees or bans has expanded from a few, often affluent, liberal cities on the West Coast ... tto dozens of legislative proposals in states like Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia.

"Yet as support increased in places, the national economy began to decline. No state has imposed a fee or a ban."

Why have bag taxes and bans failed? The story credits bag makers, who have stepped up marketing efforts and brought lawsuits against cities that have tried to impose bans and fees. (Check out the photo on the coalition's Web site -- it makes President Obama look like he's a plastic bag supporter!)

The story also notes that, "Despite its popular appeal, the issue has not been a priority for national environmental groups. They are more likely to focus on broad federal issues like carbon emissions, renewable energy and use of public lands."

It was bound to happen -- a company that provides a pool of all-plastic pallets embedded with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags sent me a news release today announcing that it has filed a lawsuit charging a competitor with theft.

Intelligent Global Pooling Systems Co. LLC said it was able to identify the allegedly stolen pallets at the competitor's facility because of the embedded RFID tags.

"We will not tolerate theft of our pallets," Ben Stoller, vice president of Orlando, Fla.-based iGPS, said in the news release.

I imagine the combination of plastic pallets with RFID tags will come in handy for companies trying to track stolen merchandise, too -- not just stolen pallets. What thief is going to bother to change pallets when they steal a shipment of goods?

The Muscatine Journal in Muscatine, Iowa, is reporting that a worker at injection molder Letica of Iowa Inc. died on Wednesday following a fork lift accident at the plant. The story quotes a police lieutenant saying it was an accident. A spokeswoman for the parent company, Letica Corp. of Rochester, Mich., added: "Our prayers are for the family and the people at the plant."

Consider this a reminder to double-check your company's safety plans and make sure workers understand why they are important.

Here's an interesting idea for a plastics-related small business. A Reno, Nev., company is offering franchises for investors who want to go into business as freelance shrink-wrappers.

That's right -- shrink wrappers. It's not just for packaging anymore. A lot of folks use shrink wrap to store boats over the winter, and the company, Fast Wrap USA, notes that uses for the protective film are "growing beyond marinas to disaster zones, construction sites and basic backyard uses," according to this story.

The recession is creating demand for wrapping some products, also helping to generate interest from people looking for jobs or supplemental income.

Mike Enos, co-founder of the company, says he has franchises in eight locations, with three more in the works. He hopes to have 30 locations by the end of 2009, and 500 nationally within five years.

Right now a franchise goes for $50,000 to $60,000, and includes training "and all supplies needed to get started -- heat guns, ladders and rolls of shrink wrap."

Sounds like a winning idea.

What plastics companies are doing the most innovative things related to the environment, sustainability and plastics recycling? One place to find out is at the annual Global Plastics Environmental Conference (GPEC), scheduled for Feb. 25-27 in Orlando, Fla.

In advance of the event, the Plastics Environmental Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers has named the winners of its GPEC 2009 Environmental Stewardship Awards. The awards recognize organizations that have demonstrated environmental leadership and excellence. Here's a list of the winners:

• Cereplast Inc. of Hawthorne, Calif., for "Emerging Technologies In Materials." Cereplast developed Cereplast Hybrid Resins, a proprietary polypropylene blend with about 50% renewable additives and properties similar to traditional PP.
• Mohawk Greenworks of Eton, Ga., for "Carpet/Floor/Wall Coverings Recycling." The company contributed to the 'total recycling' of post-consumer carpets, establishing small-scale (portable) recycling centers.
• Western Digital of Lake Forest, Calif., for "Design for Sustainability." Collaborating with the Packaging Plus company, Western Digital developed a lightweight, efficient packaging and shipping system using recycled plastics for safe transportation of fragile computer hard-drives across the globe, reducing weight, cost, damage, and energy consumption.
• KW Plastics of Troy, Ala., for "Plastics Recycling Technologies and Applications." The company pioneered efforts to set up a national paint can recycling program and developed proprietary cans made from recycled plastics.
• Eagle Performance Products of Calhoun, Ga., for "Enabling Technologies in Processes and Procedures." The company insitituted a voluntary emissions control program at its plant to reduce waste and emissions from plastics additives, and it promoted such stewardship throughout its supply and customer chain.
• List AG, of Arisdorf, Switzerland, for New Technologies in Processes." List developed a continuous, free radical, non-solvent polymerization process for methyl methacrylate monomer, using a unique kneader extruder system with low power consumption.
• Cascade Engineering Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich., for "New Environmental Technologies in Conventional Plastic Materials." The company manufactures wind turbines for domestic and community applications, using a recyclable engineering thermoplastic.
• Braskem SA of Sao Paulo, Brazil, for "Plastic Materials from Renewable Sources." Braskem developed an innovative process for using ethanol to produce polyethylene, and the company implemented the process in a large-scale production plant.
• DuPont Co. of Wilmington, Del., for "Plastic Materials from Renewable Sources." DuPont invented and produces bio-based Cerenol polyols from renewably sourced 1,3 propane diol (Bio-PDO) for use in various applications, including use as intermediates in the manufacture of several polymers.
• Pace Industries of Reedsburg, Wis., for the "Chairman's Award." The company supplies recyclable/compostable sheet and film products, recycles its own and customers' plastics, has taken measures to reduce waste and energy consumption, makes use of alternative energy sources, and facilitates similar practices among its suppliers and customers in the graphic arts industry.
• Peninsula Packaging Co. of Exeter, Calif., is the receipient of the "Daniel Eberhardt Environmental Award." Peninsula Packaging has established an Environmental Sustainability program that involves recycling of large amounts of post-consumer plastic bottles, converting them to sheet and containers for the packaging and food industry, and deriving a substantial part of its electricity needs from its own photovoltaic solar farms. The company also supports academic research at universities to develop tools for the post-consumer plastics industry. This award is given in recognition of Peninsula Packaging's total commitment to environmental sustainability.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Fast Company magazine has a long, detailed story on the history of the bisphenol A safety debate on its Web site. The chemical and plastics industries are right in the bulls eye, starting with the title, "The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A," and the introduction: "How a handful of consultants used Big Tobacco's tactics to sow doubt about science and hold off regulation of BPA, a chemical in hundreds of products that could be harming an entire generation."

The story doesn't require a thorough understanding of the BPA issue, although it definitely helps. It sets the stage pretty quickly, giving the history of researchers' questions about BPA, and establishing the differences in various studies ("Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects at levels similar to human exposure. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted -- 14 in all -- has found no such effects.")

The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Sciences International and Weinberg Group, three insitutions that have played a role in industry efforts to defend BPA, are singled out for criticism. One critic notes that during the period that the Harvard center studied BPA, it "acted very much like a product-defense group." The other institutions are similarly discredited.

The major contribution this story makes to the BPA debate is its effort to paint the chemical industry with the same brush as the tobacco industry, which used some of the same organizations in its efforts to discredit research on tobacco dangers.

Obviously plastics don't want to be mentioned in the same story as tobacco, so readers of Fast Company's story are going to have a strong negative reaction against BPA.

Here's the story's conclusion:

... consumers and concerned producers and retailers of BPA products are left with two options: Trust that the chemical industry has their best interests at heart, or take precautions. In its report, the NIH's National Toxicology Program advised "concerned parents" to reduce their use of canned foods; use BPA-free baby bottles; and opt for glass, porcelain, or stainless-steel containers, particularly for hot foods and liquids. Independent scientists applauded, though many of them contend that the advice should have been even more strongly worded -- and would have been, were the agency not constrained by the industry-funded science.

"The U.S. has this disjointed approach to chemicals management that doesn't focus on the inherent hazard of the chemical," says Joel Tickner, project director at the Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. BPA is far from the only modern-age substance whose effects we don't fully understand, and isn't the only product whose safety record has been twisted. In that way, perhaps, it may be the canary in the coal mine. And so the question looms: In our quest for progress -- and profit -- are we putting our future at risk?

Critics have high expectations that the Obama administration will push for change in how the Food and Drug Administration regulates chemicals.

Michigan State University's School of Packaging will soon be home to a new Center for Packaging Innovation and Sustainability, thanks in part to a $400,000 gift from Coca-Cola Co.

East Lansing, Mich.-based MSU announced the news today, noting that the center " will serve as a think tank for packaging innovation and sustainability and a research and education hub to measure and reduce packaging's environmental impact."

"The center will offer an entry point for industry to have easy access to MSU expertise. It will serve as a bridge between corporate and packaging industry professionals and university scientists in engineering, packaging, business, the environment and other areas," said Satish Udpa, dean of the MSU College of Engineering, in a news release. "The center will be a clearinghouse that disseminates information and encourages action that speeds the adoption and implementation of sustainable practices."

The center will include technology for bench research and testing of packaging materials, and it will offer academic, outreach and continuing education programs. The school expects it to eventually expand its reach internationally through facilities in Dubai and Shanghai.

Established in 1952, the MSU School of Packaging touts itself as the first and largest packaging program in the United States.

Buckhorn Inc., a Milford, Ohio-based injection molder of reusable containers and pallets, recently took part in "A Day of Service for Our Military," an event where about 75,000 personal care kits were assembled for military personnel serving abroad.

The event was held Jan. 19 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington. The volunteer assembly line of more than 10,000 people included state governors, members of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, incoming Cabinet officials, Jill Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Buckhorn's part in the project was providing plastic hand-held totes, which the organizer, Operation Gratitude, used to store, sort, assemble and ship the large number of donated items.

“We are excited and fortunate to continue our support of Operation Gratitude in its important mission to bring a bit of home to our service personnel,” said Joel Grant, Buckhorn’s managing director. “That our products can be part of that process, to be used in giving thanks to our military, is quite an honor.”

Operation Gratitude sends care packages of snacks, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation addressed to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed in hostile regions such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and on military ships at sea. Its mission is to lift morale, and since its inception in March 2003, Operation Gratitude has shipped more than 410,000 packages to American military deployed overseas.

The Chicago Tribune had a feature story on Saturday about a reporter's effort to (sort of) live for a week without plastic. This story topic is becoming popular everywhere, it seems. As usual, the reporter doesn't really make much of an effort to live entirely without plastic. That would require giving up electricity and plumbing, healthcare and automobiles. No, the focus is on giving up packaging and disposable diapers -- and even then, reporter Trine Tsouderos discovers that living without plastics in 2008 isn't easy (or perhaps even desireable).

The story is labeled "A consumer watch special report," which seems a bit of a stretch. I guess it's "special" because Tsouderos subjected her husband and children to the pseudo no-plastic lifestyle for a whole week.

The story itself is OK, but my favorite part are the reader comments. Most are submitted anonymously, but I think I recognize a few of the authors based on their comments and writing style.

Someone with the pen name "2nd Amendment" from Sycamore, Ill., writes: "To be honest, I simply do not understand the fear of plastic? What in the world is wrong with it? Ooo... It doesn't degrade in a landfill. So what? Most things don't. What, in a few years are you expecting the landfills to become a nice pile of fluff to turn into a vegetable garden? Folks would do well to learn some real science and forget about the latest pop-culture, carbon footprint, pseudo-science that is seems to pass as fact these days."

"Reality" from Winfield, Ill., adds: "another stupid article. To go without plastic you'd have to live in a cave or tree. There is lots of plastic in every building. You couldn't drive a car, ride a bus/plane, or ride a bike. You'd have no food since it's used in the equipment to grow and harvest food and transport, refrigerate, etc. Get real!"

Someone who calls themselves "American" wrote: "I see a lot of articles like this lately, trying to live plastic free, trying to buy nothing for a year, trying to eat locally for a year, and they all end up sounding like a variation on obsessive-compulsive disorder."

There are also interesting debates among the readers about the pros and cons of plastics packaging, what living plastic-free really means, and whether the debate should actually be about America's overconsumption habit. As a result, the reader comments add depth to the story, and I encourage you to check them out.

Do you know who invented the first plastic toothpaste tube? According to this story in the Lowell Sun, it was Westford, Mass., plastics expert Roger Brandt, who died on Dec. 8 at age 88.

Brandt worked for American National Can Co., which is where he invented the plastic toothpaste tube back in the 1960s.

"Before plastic tubes, they were all aluminum or lead," said Brandt's daughter, Betsy Nahas, a science teacher at Chelmsford High School. "For a long time, people said it was no big deal, the tubes didn't include the lead ion that makes you sick. Procter & Gamble was ready to reject the plastic tube, when a new report showed you could get lead poisoning from the (old) tubes. Procter & Gamble called Dad the next day, and asked, how many tubes can you deliver tomorrow?"

His reward?

"It was like any company," said Nahas. "A slap on the back, here's 50 bucks, what are you going to do for an encore? You sign away intellectual property rights to the company you work for."

Thanks to the Sun, and to Nahas, for sharing that story today.

Computer company Dell Inc. wants to be "the greenest technology company on the planet," and today announced a green-packaging strategy that it said would help save $8 million and approximately 20 million pounds of packaging material over the next four years.

One of the interesting angles: Dell will replace foam with air-filled cushions, molded pulp cushions, and thermoformed cushions made from 100 percent recycled high density polyethylene. In the next year, Dell estimates that it will use an estimated 33 million recycled milk jugs to make packaging for its desktops and laptops.

"We're challenging every technology company to join us in implementing a global green packaging strategy," said Tod Arbogast, director of Sustainable Business at Dell. “In doing so, we will drive extraordinary environmental and cost savings for our businesses and customers while setting a new efficiency model for other industries to follow.”

Remember the contest that Telluride, Mountain Village and Aspen, Colo., had this summer, where they encouraged residents to use reusable grocery bags instead of disposables? Now the contest to being expanded to as many as 24 other ski towns in Colorado, and it will cover all of 2009.

That's the story from the Summit Daily News in Frisco, Colo., which reports that the voluntary challenge among the Colorado Association of Ski Towns could prevent the use of nearly 7 million single-use plastic bags.

Participating towns are asking local groceries and other retailers to keep track of how many reusable bags are used, and to make a 5 cent donation for each bag to an environmental education fund.

This is such a better idea than a bag ban or a tax. Consumers can participate in the contest, and perhaps even get a small rebate from the store for using using reusable bags -- but the stores can still hand out disposable bags, which are handy for people who reuse them or who forget to bring their reusable bags.

The Drink Technology India conference and trade show went off as scheduled on Nov. 27-28 in Mumbai, despite the terrorist attacks that shook the city that week.

The show, which is put on by Munich International Trade Fairs, is a convention for the beverage, liquid food and PET packaging sector. (The list of exhibitors includes Husky, Netstal, KraussMaffei, Krones, Sidel and other names familiar to Plastics Blog readers.)

The organizer put out a news release after the event that makes for pretty fascinating reading. The headline isn't something you typically see from a trade show organizer: "drink technology India overshadowed by terrorist attacks."

It notes:

When the congress began on the morning of 27 November, Mumbai had seen a night of terror -- a crisis that took both Munich International Trade Fairs as well as the event organiser totally by surprise. “There have been a few attacks in India and also in Mumbai in this year, but terrorist attacks to that extent could simply not be expected“, said Managing Director of Munich International Trade Fairs, Norbert Bargmann.

As a reaction to the attacks, the opening ceremony was cancelled, but the congress took place as planned -- also with regards to the participants who had come to Mumbai from all over the world. 45 companies from the beverage and liquid food industry had booked stand spaces at the accompanying exhibition. Being situated near the airport in the North of Mumbai, the Grand Hyatt seemed to offer safety, as the attacks appeared to be concentrated in the South of the city.

However, when the situation in Mumbai got more and more precarious and unclear in the afternoon of 27 November, the congress management decided to leave it up to the concerned whether they wanted to participate on the second day or not. Some of the exhibiting companies had already left at this point, others stayed in Mumbai until the official end of the event at their own risk. At the get-together in the evening, a minute's silence in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks was held.

Due to the terrorist attacks, the unclear information situation and the appeals to the inhabitants of Mumbai to stay at their homes, clearly less visitors came to the Grand Hyatt than expected. The signs before the event had been very positive, though: a lot more visitors had pre-registered than for the premiere in 2007 and the demand for stand spaces at the accompanying exhibition in the hotel lobby had been higher than in the previous year.

The conclusion of Munich International Trade Fairs’ Managing Director, Norbert Bargmann: “We would like to thank all participants who did not lose their courage and believe in the event in this situation. Due to the incidents, a qualitative and quantitative evaluation is not possible. There is, however, no doubt that we will adhere both to the event itself and the location in India. drink technology India will take place -- after a one year break due to drinktec 2009 in Munich -- again in 2010!“

That must have been quite a week. I'm glad the Drinktec folks made it home safely, and that they're feeling optimistic enough to plan a 2010 event. Still, this raises some important questions about security for business travelers.

The Erie, Pa., Times-News is reporting today that Erie Plastics Corp. is going to close in 60 to 90 days. The story quotes CEO Hoop Roche.

Berry Plastics Corp. in Evansville, Ind., had announced yesterday it has agreed to buy "certain assets" of Erie.

"Erie Plastics previously filed for bankruptcy protection on September 29, 2008, and Berry Plastics was the successful bidder for the majority of the assets of Erie Plastics including equipment, inventory and other tangible and intangible assets," Berry said in a news release.

Plastics News is working on getting confirmation of the plan to shut down Erie Plastics, and we'll post our own story as soon as possible.

The sale to Berry means, of course, that the deal announced in September to sell Erie to Crawford Group of Cleveland is not going to happen.

Plastic bag taxes are making a rare (up to now, at least) foray into the heartland: The mayor of Toledo, Ohio, has proposed a tax, similar to the plan offered last week by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

According to this story from the Toledo Blade newspaper, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner has not proposed a specific amount, but Council President Mark Sobczak said they have been discussing a 6 cent-per-bag tax -- with 5 cents going to the city and 1 cent to the store.

Reaction from the city council was mixed. District Councilman Lindsay Webb called it "crazy," adding "I think we have had enough with the garbage fee, and I will not support another increase in fees for people."

Councilman Joe McNamara supports the idea, offering some commonly held misconceptions about plastic bags in the process:

"The plastic bags are petroleum-based and they take up a lot of space in our landfill," he said. "Anything that ultimately saves the landfill will save the taxpayers money."

Attention Toledo taxpapers: don't expect to start saving tons of money on those landfill costs anytime soon.

The New York Times' Green Inc. business blog is reporting today that in 2009, the Times will begin using PolyGreen biodegradable bags to protect its newspapers shipped around the country. The bags, from GP Plastics Corp., are supposed to degrade in an open environment within a few months, "and within two to three years when in a landfill," according to a Times spokeswoman.

She said the Times is the "first national newspaper to commit to using this environmentally friendly bag. While this new bag is more expensive, we believe it is an important change to make."

Blog readers will recall that we covered the introduction of PolyGreen back in February, with the pithy headline "Will newspapers pay a premium to avoid being hypocritical?"

And now we know one that will.

Some processors are making some very attractive products using in-mold decorating, and the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based In-Mold Decorating Association is highlighting some of the best-of-the-best with its second annual IMDA Awards. Check this link for more information, including photos of the honorees.

Here's the list of winners:

Best Part Design – Aspasie IML (Canada) for Swatch Buttons
Best Thin Wall Packaging – North America IML Containers (Canada) for Chapman's YogurtPlus
Best Injection Mold Part – Polisport (Portugal) for Dirt Bike Spoilers
Best Blow Mold Part – Viappinai Printing (Italy) for Seven Powers Perfume bottle
Best IMD Durable Product – IGH Solutions (USA) for Nescafé Lenticular Cup
Best Label Design – Spies Kunststoffe GmbH (Germany) for Mövenpick Schätze der Welt
Best Label Design, Honorable Mention – Ropak Packaging (USA) for Preen Garden Weed Preventer
Best Product Family – Smyth Companies/Technimark (USA) for P&G Olay Skin Care Products
Best Product Family, Honorable Mention – Gateway Plastics (USA) for Maxx Scoop Litter (7 kg)

Very colorful! Congratulations to all the winners.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel continued its "Watchdog report" series on bisphenol A safety this weekend. The newest wrinkle: the results of lab tests on containers either marketed for infants or billed as microwave-safe.

According to the story, the 10 products tested release "toxic doses" of BPA when heated.

If regulators agree with the "toxic" defiinition -- and if the lab results are accurate -- it could extend the issue of BPA safety beyond polycarbonate baby bottles and reusable sport drink containers.

"The newspaper's test results raise new questions about the chemical and the safety of an entire inventory of plastic products labeled as 'microwave safe,'" the story says. "The newspaper tests also revealed that BPA, commonly thought to be found only in hard, clear plastic and in the lining of metal food cans, is present in frozen food trays, microwaveable soup containers and plastic baby food packaging."

Frederick vom Saal, the University of Missouri researcher who has kept a spotlight on BPA safety for the past decade, oversaw the Journal Sentinel's testing. He's quoted in the story saying: "There is no such thing as safe microwaveable plastic."

Some manufacturers quoted in the story dispute that conclusion. The story quotes John Faulkner, director of brand communications for Campbell Soup Co., who wrote: "These levels are EXTREMELY low. In fact, you might just be able to find similar levels in plain old tap water due to "background" levels. We are talking 40 to 60 parts per trillion (ppt). What is 40 to 60 ppt? 40 to 60 seconds in 32,000 years! Essentially, these levels have absolutely no relevance in terms of human risk."

The Journal Sentinel's Web site includes that emailed response, as well as a statement from the American Chemistry Council and statements from manufacturers of other products that were tested.

Rubbermaid, for example, notes that "BPA is used in a small fraction of our products including Premier to provide the clarity and stain & odor resistance consumers desire. Based on numerous thorough, empirical scientific studies and the positions taken by major regulatory authorities from around the globe, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Union, we continue to believe Bisphenol A is safe in our applications." But the company goes on to say that the company has a new page on its Web site to help consumers "easily identify which Rubbermaid food and beverage containers do and do not contain BPA, to help consumers choose alternatives if they wish."

It looks like BPA safety issues are getting ready to leap into new segments of the packaging and housewares markets. It will be interesting to see how companies respond.

Bag bans and taxes continue to pop up across the country, but defenders of plastic bags can point to a victory in Red Bank, N.J., where the borough council decided to drop a proposed ban on Monday. The Asbury Park Press reported on the move today, noting that the decision came after a "spirited debate."

The story notes that the proposal has been in discussion for almost 10 months. It would have banned plastic bags starting July 1.

Once again, an industry promise to step up bag recycling efforts was an important part of the arsenal. Donna Dempsey of the American Chemistry Council's Progressive Bag Affiliates spoke at the meeting, arguing that "A better approach is to sit down with people who know plastic bags, recycling, stores and solid waste."

Meanwhile, as I noted, plastic bag legislation is continuing to spread. In Toronto, where city officials are discussing a new packaging proposal, a group of elementary school kids are going to speak to the city council's works committee today to push for a bag ban, according to this story from the Globe and Mail.

"When we're adults, we want a clean world, we don't want it polluted all over with plastic bags and whatnot," said David Cash, 11.

Their teacher, former human-rights lawyer Harriet Simand, says the exercise has taught the children about organizing to fight for a cause.

"They have a very clear sense of right and wrong," Ms. Simand said. "Sometimes adults need to hear it."

It seems fitting to see 11-year-olds take up the issue. Watching the plastics industry battle against bag bans already seems like watching a kid play Whac-A-Mole. Whenever they knock one down, another pops up somewhere else.

Popular Mechanics magazine's Web site has a fun feature today, "Recycling Myths: PM Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling." It's always interesting for me to see what magazines like Popular Mechanics are saying about plastics, so I'll share the publication's Myth No. 5: "Most of the plastic put in recycling bins ends up in the garbage."

This one is true now, but changing quickly. Sorting plastics is tricky for recycling processors. Bottles can't be separated out with a magnet; small pieces like coffee-cup lids get flattened and mixed into paper bales; bags get caught in the spinning disks of sorting equipment, forcing frequent shut-downs. Trying to decode the recycling numbers on plastic products is also a pain for consumers.

As a result, it's true that most of the plastic we use does end up in landfill sites. Less than 1 percent of polystyrene containers (e.g. yogurt pots) are recycled, and even well-established recyclables like PET (e.g. soft-drink bottles) end up in the trash more than two-thirds of the time. But the problem isn't that recycling programs are dumping recyclable plastic into the trash -- it's that they don't accept the plastics in the first place.

That problem is on the way out, though. This spring, San Francisco announced that its pioneering recycling program would begin accepting all rigid plastic, including anything from yogurt pots and clamshell containers to plastic toys and buckets. Other cities are also expanding the range of plastics they accept. New technology makes this feasible: Optical sorters use infrared light to instantly identify the chemical composition of a container, then a puff of air directs it into the right pile.

Recyclers also have to find a market for plastics once they're sorted -- and that's starting to happen, too. San Francisco recently signed a deal to sell rigid 5-gal buckets, common in construction, to a company that will turn them into artificial lumber for landscaping.

The information about sortation isn't really new. Big PET recyclers have been using sophisticated sortation equipment -- like the technology described here -- for over a decade.

I don't think it's really fair to say that this myth "is true now." Obviously most plastic thrown away in the U.S. today ends up in landfills, and the numbers PM cites are accurate. But that's not the same as saying that "most of the plastic put in recycling bins ends up in the garbage." Sure, consumers throw stuff in their recycling bins that communities don't want, and that ends up being thrown away. But is that the majority of plastics?

I suspect that most of the plastic put into recycling bins are PET and HDPE bottles, and there is definitely a market for those containers.

So the bottom line is that PM is right, it is a myth that most plastic put in recycling bins ends up in the garbage. They also happen to be wrong, because the first sentence of the article contradicts the headline.

Thanks to PN colleague Kathie Case for pointing out this story today.

The city of Toronto is preparing to release a report on ways to reduce packaging waste. The news could come as soon as tomorrow. But while the proposal has not been released yet, it is already generating attention, especially from representatives of the plastics industry that worry that their products could be banned.

The Globe and Mail newspaper wrote last week: "Many options are in play, such as an outright ban on materials used in food takeout, a tax on plastic bags, a city deposit-return program, encouragement for customers to leave packaging at the store and, there's that word again, a ban on bottled water at city facilities." (Sorry, that story is behind a pay wall).

The story quotes city councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, identified as one of the forces behind the proposal, saying: "I think it is appropriate to consider banning things that cannot be recycled," but adding that "polystyrene would not fall into that [category]."

Still, some in industry are concerned, and today they announced the formation of a "coalition on city in-store food packaging source reduction" that has requested a meeting with Mayor David Miller to discuss the plan.

The coalition presents its case in a news release today: "Businesses with expertise in food retailing and food distribution want to ensure their voice and expert opinion is heard. Food packaging is a very complex subject and decisions related to it cannot be solely dictated by waste diversion concerns. ... Business and industry are calling on the City to use voluntary approaches and to exercise caution. Heavy emphasis on taxes, environmental fees, deposits, and licensing restrictions to force reduction could have a number of unintended negative consequences that could end up hurting residents, consumers, retailers and ultimately the City with a marginal environmental win."

The coalition includes the plastics industry trade group the Environment and Plastics Industry Council.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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?

The Boston Globe's Sunday magazine had a big feature story about plastics yesterday, and it's noteworthy that the story was quite positive. It feels a little weird blogging on this one, since I'm a source quoted in the story. But a half dozen people who saw the story yesterday have already mentioned it to me today. So I thought I should point it out to those who missed it.

The story has a headline that will attract attention, especially from plastics industry members used to negative media attention. The title: "In Praise of Plastic: Why an oil-sucking, landfill-clogging, non-biodegradable, it's-everywhere material is so good for the environment. Really."

Here's a taste of the story:

Plastic -- symbol of a bankrupt consumer society from its maxed-out credit cards to its obsession with in-bulk acquisition -- is about as popular these days as an oil spill. People love to hate plastic for the petroleum used to produce it, for the litter it becomes, for the space it takes up in landfills, and the damage it can do in oceans. At one point this year in the United States alone, the plastics industry faced some 400 pieces of anti-plastics legislation, including one on Beacon Hill and another in Plymouth. Plastic bags -- for the plastic-haters, anyway -- are especially evil. The goal of most of the proposed laws is taxing the use of plastic bags or banning them outright. And though most have failed or wound up tabled, the anti-plastics people have had their victories, too. Namely, Seattle.

In July, the city of Seattle banned polystyrene takeout food packaging (think Styrofoam coffee cups or soup bowls) and placed a 20-cent tax on plastic bags that is set to go into effect January 1. The City Council's vote, supported by the mayor, shook a plastics industry that was still reeling from a panic in the spring. Parents concerned over the use of a possibly harmful chemical called bisphenol A, found in some clear plastic baby bottles among other things, ditched the bottles in droves, and some stores and manufacturers did the same. Then there was the phthalate ban, enacted by Congress over the summer, singling out yet another worrisome chemical often found in plastic toys.

Overall, it has been a bad year for plastics. But, quietly, the plastics industry, plastics engineers, and plastics lovers -- yes, they do exist -- are making a case for what may be a misunderstood touchstone of our times. "We see the legislative debates as an opportunity to tell the story of plastics," says Steve Russell, managing director of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, the group that represents the plastics industry. "And we believe there's a great story to tell." Plastics, Russell and others argue, aren't just durable, convenient, and inexpensive to manufacture; innovative new plastic packaging is actually more energy-efficient than other alternatives and helps users reduce, not increase, their carbon footprints.

The story goes on to tout the benefits of plastics in packaging, automobiles, aircraft and construction.

The underlying message is that plastics have plenty of positive attributes and don't deserve the bad reputation they have accumulated over the years.

But the industry's poor recycling record is front-and-center. "... Plastics are recyclable, able in most cases to be used over and over again," the story states. "The problem is, Americans, even as global warming becomes an accepted truth, don't take recycling seriously. In 2006, Americans consumed more than 29 million tons of plastic, but recycled just 2 million tons of it, a paltry 7 percent."

I have a feeling some in the plastics industry will miss that point and focus instead on the rare praise found elsewhere in the article.

Regardless, I'm pleased to see that reporter Keith O'Brien did such a thorough, well written story about plastics. I will be recommending the article to others who are looking for background information about the industry.

Plastics get a couple of mentions in Wal-Mart Canada's new corporate sustainability report, which was released today. The references come in the report's "environment" section. Here are the relevant snippets:

Wal-Mart Canada is aggressively pursuing its long-term sustainability goals: to be supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy; to produce zero waste; and to sell merchandise that sustains resources and the environment.

The company made several notable strides in 2007 including the expansion of its waste diversion program to include additional types of plastics. As a result of Wal-Mart Canada's multi-stream recycling program, the company was able to divert more than 100,000,000 kilograms of waste from landfill.

Given that 92 per cent of the company's waste is the result of product packaging, Wal-Mart Canada established new criteria to assess suppliers and supply chain partners on the basis of their environmental efforts, impact and improvement. In addition, suppliers were invited to participate in two sustainable packaging expos, in conjunction with the Packaging Association of Canada, where they were educated on new sustainable packaging materials, technologies, designs and alternatives. Wal-Mart Canada is on the verge of rolling out its new packaging scorecard, a roadmap designed to help suppliers reduce their individual packaging.

I wanted more information about the "additional types of plastics" that are being recycled, as mentioned in the news release. So I checked out the relevant section of the full report. Here's what it has to say:

Over the years, our in-store recycling efforts have grown in scope and complexity. Initially our stores recycled just cardboard. In 2006 we added plastic film to the mix. In 2007 we evolved to include virtually every type of plastic waste generated in our stores, from hangers to pill bottles. The materials are compacted together to create “sandwich bales” (a layer of plastic between two layers of cardboard), eventually sold at a profit for Wal-Mart for re-use by others.

Finally, here's what the report has to say about plastics (and other materials) in connection to the company's packaging scorecard:

Packaging reduction offers huge environmental and business benefits. Globally we’re targeting a five per cent reduction in packaging for merchandise sold in our stores by 2013. We will need to work closely with our suppliers to reach this goal.

n 2007 Wal-Mart Canada held two sustainable packaging expositions, in partnership with the Packaging Association of Canada and 120 exhibitors, to help educate many of our suppliers
and other businesses on new sustainable packaging materials, technologies, designs and alternatives. On the strength of the first exposition, the second exposition was the largest attended one-day packaging event in Canada’s history.

In 2008 Wal-Mart Canada will introduce a packaging scorecard to measure suppliers and their products on these criteria: package reduction and elimination; use of materials that are biodegradable or have residual value; commitments to reduce emissions or use renewable energy in the creation of packaging and support for programs that encourage recycling.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. obviously can move a lot of mountains in the packaging and recycling sectors. And with a goal of eventually cutting waste to zero, the company still has some heavy lifting to do. A lot of plastics packaging companies around the world are watching every Wal-Mart move very carefully.