I was running out of patience at the Ottawa airport yesterday afternoon, after the plane was taxiing for half an hour to the runway. Finally, the Embraer Emb 145 Jet geared up and started accelerating. Peng! With a strange sound, the gentleman sitting right in front of me grabbed his head by both hands. I couldn't believe my eyes, but the small panel above his seat apparently just fell down and struck the poor man's head, only still hanging to the plane through a couple tubes. Ouch! Fortunately, the gentleman said his head was fine after immediately using an ice pack except for a little headache.

I heard someone in the half-empty 50-seat plane say, "is that panel made of plastics? That's probably why it doesn't hurt as much [as metal]."

Good point! Maybe it'll even be safer with a layer of overmolded thermoplastic elastomer.

The world's growing concern with Asia production is having a push on the strengthening of product safety standards and testing in that region. Underwriters Laboratories Inc., whose service covers plastic materials, just announced an expansion in Taiwan.

The UL Taiwan Material Lab now integrates a complete system of sub-labs related to materials and has become the center of UL's operation in Asia, according to a news release dated Sept. 3 on the UL Taiwan web site.

The organization also boosted the number of long-term-thermal-aging (LTTA) testing machines, from 137 to 377. The increased capacity will help reduce the long wait time for manufacturers in Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, Korea, India, etc.

Mattel's massive recalls were received with much surprise and regret, as the company has long cultivated a nice image of tight control of overseas production and reliable quality.

I don't mean to question its record of quality control in the past, but just would like to point out the impressive work of its public relations team, especially in this crisis management project for the recalls.

My experience with Mattel's media relations has been positive. They are very responsive and professional.

They also played a nice trick in the August 14th recall. The wording of "the nearly 19 million toys that either had excessive amounts of lead paint or had small magnets that could easily be swallowed by children" appeared in the press release, repeated in the press conference, and used by most media.

How smart it is to bundle the 18.2 million toys with magnets that had design flaw instead of sub-par production with the 436,000 lead-tainted toys!

I made the facts and details clear in my story for Plastics News. But unfortunately most publications I've seen used the round-up figure and didn't distinguish between the design and production problems.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce officials tried to clarify by claiming "only 15 percent of Mattel's two recalls in August were related to lead paint." But the message didn't come clear or convincing. I don't think the Western audience like percentage points in general; also it failed to point out the remaining part of the recalled toys were poorly designed in the States, rather than having production-related problems.

This summer accompanying the growing scares over Chinese products is the global public's heating discussion on plastics bags, bottles, recycling and BPA.

I can feel the strong anti-plastic movement as a consumer. In a popular online shopping discussion forum I go to, many are asking where to buy glass food containers, as they toss out plastic ones. Some told me they learned from media reports even the ones labeled microwave-safe and dishwasher-safe don't really live up to the claims.

Then I read Alan Weisman's comments on that topic, in an interview about his new book, The World Without Us.
He said:

We did pretty well without plastics until World War II. Now, I realize that a lot of things are great with plastics, and I don't think we necessarily have to get rid of them all.

But think about what your grandmother did when she went to the market. Did she take a plastic bag for a tomato, a plastic bag for a cucumber? No, she took one bag to the market, put all of her groceries in it, brought it home, and reused it the next time she went.

I seriously want it to be made a crime to give away free bags in supermarkets -- paper bags too. That would solve an enormous problem.

I'd like to second his point about paper bags. General-interest media have given me the impression in the recent coverage of plastic bag bans that replacing plastic bags with paper bags is a good solution. But that cant be true. How many more trees will vanish from the face of the earth to make up for the current usage of plastic grocery bags? Some argue paper bags are more likely to be reused because of its physical attributes. But I think, a consumer in the habit of tossing free grocery bags won't change his routine just because the material is different.

Instead, it's the mentality of "everything is disposable."

Several years ago, a business professor with special interest in Asia asked me why he saw everybody in China holding a plastic or paper shopping bags even with store or brand logo. He was curious whether people really shopped that much and that often. I told him they were using those shopping bags as their daily bags, sort of an alternative to fancy satchel purses or messenger bags.

Somehow, I see less and less of that in China every time I go over. Well, as the economy booms, purchasing power expands and western lifestyle gains popularity, people dispose more and reuse less.

It's that I only want it fresh and new mentality. And shamefully, I've started to become obsessed with it too. I recently moved and was seriously thinking about throwing away most housewares items and buy a completely new set. They still functioned perfectly, but I just craved a new look for my home, thanks to all the home makeover shows on TV.

The good thing is I didn't let myself do that.

But, it was not easy to resist that toss-old-buy-new temptation.