This year's International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago featured an unprecedented collection of eco-friendly products. I hope you can get a feel of the green trend from the fresh photos I took at the March 16-18 show. Read my story Green Movement is in full force at 08 show for more information.

Perf Go Green Inc. of New York touted itself as the first to mass-market 100 percent degradable trash bags to consumers. The green-tinted, low density polyethylene bags have a shelf life of two years and will break down completely in a landfill in 12-24 months.

Perf Go Green also offers a unique dispensing system that's stored in the bottom of a trash can and dispenses bags one after another.

Design Ideas Ltd. of Springfield, Ill., launched a line of bath products made of EcoGen plastic, a copolymer known as polyhydroxybutyrate valerate, or PHBV.

Dirt Devil, a brand owned by TTI Floor Care North America of Glenwillow, Ohio, unveiled the industry's first cordless vacuums to receive the U.S. government's Energy Star label: the Dirt Devil AccuCharge hand (featured in the photo provided by TTI) and stick vacuums.

Casabella Holdings LLC of Blauvelt, N.Y., launched a line of dish drains, cutlery trays and soap dishes made of PLA.

Bissel Homecare Inc. uses recycled plastic in the brush block and parts of the solution tank of this Little Green compact, multipurpose cleaner.

Iris USA Inc. of Pleasant Prairie, Wis. showcased a recycling organizer that is stackable.

Hong Kong firm A&T International Co. touted biodegradable tableware and bags with a variety of materials including PHBV, a mix of 60 percent PP and 40 percent starch and natural materials such as bamboo and sugar cane.

Eastman Chemical Co. showcased bottles made of Tritan-brand specialty copolyester, which the company touts as being free of BPA.

Base Brands of Atlanta introduced water bottles that are made from a styrene acrylonitrile copolymer and prominently labeled "BPA-free," since the product is not made of polycarbonate and does not contain bisphenol A. The company promotes the message that people can use these colorful and attractive bottles to bring beverages from home to work, instead of consuming bottled water from vending machines. The SAN bottles come in packs of five, with an easy-slide base for refrigerators.

BRK Brands Inc. of Aurora, Ill., a fully owned subsidiary of Jarden Corp of Rye, N.Y., announced that it is phasing out PVC in its packaging and using recycled PET instead for its First Alert line of smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms. Photo courtesy of BRK Brands.

Umbra Ltd. of Toronto showcased desktop organizers--which resemble trash cans--injection molded with polylactic acid.

Umbra uses industrial scrap PP, plus 1-2 percent additives, to make degradable trash bins.

More degradable trash bins from Umbra with modern looks.

The trash bin is designed to hold two trash bags, divided by the center bar, one for recyclables and the other for non-recyclables.

If you wonder why I haven't updated my blog for almost half a month, I've been traveling in China and revisited two of China's most important cities--Shanghai and Beijing. On top of touring the spectacular plastic "water cube" Olympics Aquatics Center and traditional hotspots, I tried to capture the day-to-day lives of the 17 million residents in Beijing and 18.5 million in Shanghai, of course, with more or less of a plastics angle. I'll share my experience in the next few weeks. Now, I need to get ready for the Chinaplas show, Asia's largest event for the plastics industry. Chinaplas officially kicks off on April 17 with a few international conferences scheduled prior to and after the show.

Chinaplas is the largest plastics show in Asia. But how big exactly?

This year, the show features a total exhibition space of 132,500 square meters and nearly 1,800 exhibitors from 35 countries. Show organizer, the Adsale Group, said that the show's status as "number one in Asia and number three in the world(after K and NPE)" is "unshakable."

The latest stats show that 27,223 visitors attended the show on April 17, the opening day. Nearly 20 percent of them, or 5,118 people, came from outside of China.

Adsale also told the press that the electricity consumption of the show catches up to the normal power consumption of a Chinese town. Ten high-capacity generators were brought in this year and installed outside the halls, supporting the machines on display.

Latest recap of Chinaplas 2008:
Number of Visitors
April 17 : 27,223
April 18 : 25,300
April 19 : 13,331
April 20 : 6,307
Total : 72,161
Number of Overseas Visitors : 11,760 (16.3%)

Chinaplas, currently Asia's largest trade show for the plastics industry, debuted in Beijing in 1983. But it hasn't been back to its birthplace since 2004. And it's not going back in any time soon.

Why? Believe it or not, although the Chinese capital is all geared up for the 29th Olympic Games, it is not ready for the ever-growing Chinaplas show.

That's according to Stanley Chu, chairman of Hong Kong-based Adsale Group, the organizer of Chinaplas.

"Beijing doesn't have a venue large enough to hold Chinaplas," he said April 17, the first day of the four-day-long 2008 Chinaplas show in Shanghai.

Chu said Beijing's largest exhibition hall provides 125,000 square meters of exhibition space, while Chinaplas 2009 is anticipating 140,000 square meters of space.

On the site of this year's venue, the Shanghai New International Expo Center, temporary pavilions have been built in between the 11 modern, spacious halls to fit more products and people.

Chinaplas is returning to Guangzhou next year. It will take place May 18-21 in the China Import and Export Fair Pazhou Complex, which, according to Chu, is the largest fairground available in China and only slighter smaller than the Hanover Exhibition Center.

Beijing remains the economic center for northern China. and as the southeast (the Peal River Delta) and east (the Changjiang River Delta) get more expensive than ever, businesses in those regions are inevitably moving north and inland for more competitive cost structures.

You may think the location of a trade show shouldn't be a big deal, as people from all over the world fly to China for the plastics carnival. But it does matter to a country with such vast territory and diverse cultures. Just like how people from the New England wouldn't want to visit Houston in the summer, Guangzhou isn't the favorite destination for people from China's northern regions. But I guess, at least for the time being, the overwhelming advantage of foreign investment and plastic manufacturing in the South outweighs everything else.

China's success story as a world powerhouse definitely wasn't a solo act. The economy has flourished in the past three decades with foreign investment, which, by governmental definition, includes money from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Taiwanese businessmen were among the first to move factories to the mainland. Today, they are swiftly starting to shift to lower cost countries, in particular, Vietnam. Nevertheless, the indispensable role Taiwan has played and continues to play in the development of the Chinese plastics industry can't be overlooked.

That's why I give kudos to Adsale for planning a Taiwan-mainland pre-show conference for the 2009 Chinaplas. The one-day conference started in 2006 with a China-India theme and continued this year with a highlight on the cooperation between China and the United States. The Taiwan deal will be finalized in September when the Adsale Group leads a trade delegation to the Taipei Plas show. On a side note, the Taiwanese Association of Machinery Industry, organizer of the Taipei show, called off a press conference that was supposed to promote Taipei Plas at the Chinaplas show. Let's hope they've had more companies sign up than they can take.

Plastics News, for the first time, will exhibit at Taipei Plas this year.

As the Beijing Olympics torch was successfully relayed in New Delhi the evening of April 17 Beijing time, India's largest private enterprise and exporter -- Reliance Industries Ltd. -- made a toast to hundreds of its Chinese customers and industry friends at a Shanghai reception.

The company has been supplying PP, PE and PVC to Chinese processors for many years. With two representative offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou, Reliance also operates five duty-free warehouses along China's eastern coastline.

At the reception, the company announced that its experienced Shanghai chief representative, S. S. Naik, is returning to the company's Mumbai headquarters to oversee the resin giant's export business. Mr. Naik's successor is Mr. Soumen Bhattacharya, Country Head--China.

Reliance is one of the six Indian exhibitors at Chinaplas, down from nine in 2007. The numbers look incredibly low compared with the total of 1,800 exhibitors, given the close trade ties between the two booming economies.

Stanley Chu, chairman of the Adsale Group, said many foreign companies are represented at Chinaplas by their Chinese operations and therefore are listed in the China category. That may explain part of it.

In the past few days I've seen plenty of Indian buyers on the show floor, a good number of whom have registered with the show -- over1,000 according to Adsale.

India has maintained a healthy trade surplus with China in the plastics sector, a good chunk of it being resin. I wonder how much of that is generated by Reliance.

Plastics News' Shanghai correspondent Lauren Hilgers was excited when she told me that she met a very interesting person at the recent Chinaplas event. She kindly wrote this following piece for my blog, succinctly portraying a Chinese industry veteran who bridges the East and the West:

Li Qin Ren's American colleagues rarely or never refer to him by his first or full name. To Russ Johnson and Carl Olson, the bespectacled general manager of China Array Plastics's Wuhan operation is always "Mr. Li." And Mr. Li comes up so much in conversation that I had begun to think of him as fictional--China's Mr. Rogers of manufacturing.

According to Johnson and Olson, Mr. Li can cook, he can run a factory, successfully negotiate China's bureaucracy and leap the cultural divide between the U.S. and China in a single bound. "What people don't know about Mr. Li," said Olson at Chinaplas, "is that he is a renaissance man in China."

After meeting Mr. Li, it is hard to think less of him. At 65, he has weathered sea changes in China's economy, going from work as a chief engineer at a state-owned company, to a few years doing research in the United States, to retirement in 2003 and resurrection in the plastics industry.

"I always joke that, although my past position was very high, I never had to worry about the whole company," Li said. "Now I work at a much smaller company, and I feel more pressure!"

It was Li's relationship with Johnson that brought him to plastics at this late stage in life. Li's previous expertise had been in the shipbuilding industry. When Johnson came to China in 1984, he met Li across a negotiating table. "In our company there were not many people who could speak English, so they asked me to do negotiations and interpretation," he said. The pair hit it off. When Johnson returned on trips to China, Li helped him source goods and ensure quality. When Li went to do research in the U.S., he thought, "Naturally, Russ is the one American I would like to know."

Li has helped Johnson navigate what Li sees as three phases of China's economy--the first negotiating with state-owned enterprise. "State companies are not so flexible, and these companies were defense industry companies so they will neglect other orders."

As China's economy opened up, Johnson began contracting with private companies, but ensuring quality was an issue. "Now is the third phase," Li said. "This is a wholly-owned foreign enterprise and we are operating according to international standards."

Li has been working with China Array since his retirement, but thinks the company should look to the future. "At first they needed a person like me, who has experience working in a manufacturing company," Li said. "But we need to consider the next generation."From left: Li, Olson and Li's daughter at Chinaplas. Photo taken by Lauren Hilgers.

There used to be a popular slogan "New Beijing, New Olympics." It was part of China's campaign to become host of the 2008 Olympics. I still remember how the entire city of Beijing was transported with joy on the evening of July 13, 2001, when Juan Antonio Samaranch announced it had been awarded the right to host the global sports game.

Nearly seven years have passed since then. And, since I've been away from Beijing for a while, I decided to visit my second-hometown before tourists from all over the world embrace for the Summer Olympics in a city with 3,000 years of history. How did this new Beijing strike me?

In the taxi line of the Beijing Capital International Airport, I felt at home with all the Beijing and northern Chinese accents. My travel companion and I were greeted warmly by our cabby -- in English! Well, that's probably because we were speaking English when the cab pulled up. I started to chat with the 40-something driver in Chinese. But he asked me to switch back to English, so that he could test his language proficiency.

"I'm a volunteer for the Olympic Games," he said, with much pride. A native Beijing resident, he's been learning and using English for his job for seven years, he said. He will even take full-time training in June for Olympics volunteers. "I learn English from customers every day. I learned the word smoggy yesterday when a Canadian lady was commenting on the weather."

Photo taken by Nina Ying Sun

Well, it's true, I didn't see the clear, blue sky of my memory of Beijing in the springtime. It was a little smoggy, as you can see from the picture I took. But honestly, the air was better than Shanghai. The city has spent more than US$12 billion to improve air quality. Considering all the construction, the exploding number of vehicles and Beijing's location and climate (next to deserts, as opposed to Shanghai and Hong Kong by the sea), you can see that the government has been working hard.

But back to the language issue: Beijing is not as Westernized as Shanghai. Many service people still don't speak English. Hademen Hotel, where I stayed, is well-known for its traditional Chinese imperial furnishings. I saw more Western faces in the lobby and hallway than Chinese. But a bilingual sign in the bathroom caught my attention. A Chinese sentence reads: if you would like new towels, please place the used ones in the bathtub; if you need new disposable supplies (toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and soap), please throw the used ones in the trash bin. That's pretty reasonable, right? But the English translation, as you can see in the picture, instructs guests to throw towels into the trash bin! That's really sloppy, to say the least.

Photo taken by Nina Ying Sun

Sometimes, I feel it's too harsh to expect China to speak good English. Just like how an American would brush up French before going to Paris, why expect the Chinese, representing a quarter of the world's population, to quickly pick up on a language that uses letters instead of square characters?

Western expatriates in China in most cases don't speak Chinese. They have translators and assistants. It's alright for business people. But an interesting comparison of journalists tells something: Western correspondents in China usually rely on their local language aids for gathering info in Chinese language. They can say Ni Hao and Xie Xie, but rarely can conduct an interview in Chinese. But I've not met or heard of a Chinese national working for China-based Chinese-language media from the U.S. who doesn't speak fluent English.

Just a random thought. But it's not an issue of Chinese versus English the global business language. It's the subtle interaction between all other languages and English.

Everything is under construction.

And the massive Forbidden City, i.e. the Palace Museum, is no exception. All three major halls where emperors held sessions with cabinets were being renovated. Such a disappointment! I was told the Forbidden City has a total of 9,999 rooms. But, at least for me, the rooms that count are those three magnificent ones. They are the ones that visitors must see.

But to the north of the Forbidden City, the construction scene looked encouraging. The National Stadium -- or the Bird's Nest -- and the National Aquatics Center, also known as the Water Cube, are next to each other. Construction of the Bird's Nest is being finished. The Water Cube has been done for a while, and for a period of time was open to the public. But now it's also being prepped for the Olympic Games to open August 8.

Photo taken by Nina Ying Sun

I was wandering around on the site, thinking how contemporary and gigantic these buildings are. Then some people walked by, discussing how expensive it will be to maintain the plastic-film exterior of the Water Cube. "It's easier to build than to clean this thing in Beijing's environment," I heard.

Speaking of which, many building exteriors in Shanghai and Beijing, as impressive as they are, could really use a thorough cleaning. But I guess the cost can add up with all the dust and chemicals constantly floating in the air.